(via Carl Lehnen, University of Illinois at Chicago)
Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive of Holocaust Testimonies now available at UIC Library
The University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Library is pleased to announce that it is now a partner site of the Fortunoff Video Archive of Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University Library. It is one of twelve partner sites in North America and the first partner site located west of the Appalachians. The Archive contains over 4,500 digitized interviews and over 10,000 hours of testimony from those with first-hand experience of the Nazi persecutions, including survivors, bystanders and liberators.
As a partner site, UIC makes these recordings available for viewing in the Special Collections and University Archives department at the Richard J. Daley Library. To prepare for a visit, researchers must first request access to particular testimonies via Yale’s library catalog, receive confirmation, and then make an appointment with the UIC Library’s Special Collections department to view. Detailed instructions for searching and requesting access can be found on the UIC Library’s guide to using the Fortunoff Archive: researchguides.uic.edu/fortunoff
About Yale University Library’s Fortunoff Video Archive of Holocaust Testimonies
The Archive traces its beginnings to a grassroots project started in 1979 to gather testimonies of Holocaust survivors. In 1981, this seed collection of 183 recordings was deposited at Yale, and since then the Archive has grown from a local New Haven project into a worldwide effort involving 37 affiliated projects across North America, South America, Europe and Israel, including Northwestern University’s Holocaust Educational Foundation. Excerpts from the testimonies have appeared in award-winning documentaries; “Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory” (1995), which was named one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century by the New York Times Book Review; and the Grammy-award-winning “Different Trains” by Steve Reich. In 2016, the Archive completed a multi-year digitization project that ensured the long-term preservation of the testimonies.
About the University of Illinois at Chicago Library’s Special Collections and University Archives
Special Collections and University Archives houses rare books and printed materials, manuscript collections and university archives, specializing in the history of Chicago. For more information, visit uic.library.edu/special-collections-university-archives or call (312) 996-2742.