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Shoah testimonies to reside at U-M, available to the public
U-M was chosen to be a portal to the Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive in part because of its ability to provide the intensive computing environment needed to manage the massive, multi-media files that make up the database. The full digital archive resides at the Shoah Foundation located in Los Angeles. The public will be able to access the archive from computers in any one of U-M’s 19 libraries via Internet2, an extremely fast, super-high bandwidth Internet connection that can transmit multimedia material at real time speeds. "The Shoah Foundation will transcend campus needs and will be sought after by members of the community," said Brenda Johnson, Associate University Librarian for Public Services. "The University Library will be working with the Shoah Foundation to broaden access for others in the state to this unique resource." The Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive consists of digitized copies of nearly 52,000 videotaped interviews from 56 countries in 32 languages. Extensive indexing makes it possible to search the material using more than 30,000 geographic and experiential keywords. The archive can be searched by many terms, including a specific first or last name, topic, or group of people, such as Sinti and Roma (Gypsies), or Jews, or homosexuals, by a description of an experience or a psychological reaction. Henry Greenspan, lecturer in U-M's Residential College, says the archive offers capabilities for study that would be very hard to do otherwise. “As someone especially interested in psychological dimensions of survivors' experiences, for example, I was glad to see that the index includes a number of items of psychological relevance,” Greenspan said. “It becomes possible to compare, quite quickly, the wide range of ways people speak about loss, or rage, or guilt, and so on.” U-M faculty is reviewing the archive for use in classes beginning as early as the Fall 2005 term. Possible areas include Jewish studies, language studies that would examine the native languages used by those interviewed, film and video production techniques, and techniques for oral and visual histories.
"The Shoah Foundation's archive greatly enriches the teaching and research resources of the University," said Todd Endelman, director of U-M's Judaic Studies Program. "Faculty and students in history, literature, political science, Jewish studies, and other areas will be able to access its vast storehouse of memories and reflections with ease due to the finely tuned electronic finding aid that comes with it. I envision its use in both undergraduate teaching and graduate and faculty research." Because of the size of the digitized testimonies, approximately 200 interviews are immediately accessible via the U-M library computers. Others requested from the archive are viewable within 24 hours. U-M librarians will assist users, either on the spot or by appointment. There is no charge for searching or for aid. Appointments can be made at svha.help@umich.edu. The testimonies represent nine survivor and witness experience groups. All experienced or witnessed persecution and/or the exclusionist policies of the Nazi regime. The groups include homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, political prisoners, rescuers and aid providers, Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) survivors, liberators and liberation witnesses, survivors of eugenics policies and war crimes trials participants. More than 90 percent of the interviewees are Jewish. It is also possible to compare what the same survivors have said and written about their experience at different times, Greenspan adds. “A lot of the people interviewed in the Shoah Foundation's archives have been interviewed in other projects. Some have also written memoirs, so it becomes possible through this Shoah Foundation partnership to compare what people say and how they say it in one testimony context with another. Those questions about how survivors retell, impact of context, range of emotional responses, etc. are very much part of my undergrad teaching--indeed, it's mainly in a first-year seminar that I teach this. The 'kids' get it!" Related links: Frankel Center for Judaic Studies
Contact: Joanne Nesbit |
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The University of Michigan's University Library has entered a partnership with
Survivors of the Shoah Foundation that will make the videotaped testimonies of
nearly 52,000 Holocaust survivors and other witnesses available to the general
public at the University. The University of Michigan joins Rice and Yale universities
and the University of Southern California in providing access to the archive
via Internet2.
