Mission Statement
The Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive exists to maintain a collection of oral testimonies of those who survived the Holocaust and make these widely accessible for educational purposes. Through interlibrary loan, the Internet and community outreach, we make the oral testimonies and transcriptions available to researchers, students and the general public.
The archive strives to create personal links between listeners and survivors of the Holocaust for the purpose of providing an empathetic appreciation of the victims' experiences, thereby gaining greater insight into the historical event of the Holocaust. Through engagement of the listeners, the Archive seeks to reduce anti-Semitism and racism as it encourages tolerance.
Description
The Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive is a collection of over 300 audio and video taped oral history interviews with Holocaust Survivors. The Archive is housed in the University of Michigan-Dearborn's Mardigian Library.
Since 1981, Dr. Sidney Bolkosky, Professor of History at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, has interviewed Holocaust survivors. The University's Mardigian Library has been the repository of these interviews. It has been our privilege to provide a forum for those voices, "listening ears," as one survivor notes, and the facilities to record the testimonies. As a University of distinction, the campus has demonstrated its dignity and character because of the respect it has accorded the tapes and the people who made them.
This archive represents a guarantee of honest presentation--unembroidered, without dramatization, a scholarly yet austerely moving collection of information and insight. We have been and are engaged in rescuing fragments of fragments of memory. We have done that quietly, without fanfare, but with integrity and quality. Because of that, the project is what it is, does not need any hype or dramatization. It speaks for itself--literally.
Those who have had access to the tapes--including scholars, psychologists, historians, and more than 1,000 students--have found themselves riveted to their tape recorders or VCRs. Now the collection, as it grows, has obtained a potentially larger audience. Through the work of many individuals, that audience is now international and unbounded, crossing continents and oceans, disciplines, and professions via the Voice/Vision Web site, where the transcripts and audio of over 100 of these unique interviews can be found.
