Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust

Nov 22 2023 34 ep. 25 mins 252
Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust Podcast artwork

Survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust are the subjects of “Those Who Were There,” a new podcast from Yale University’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. The podcast is narrated by Eleanor Reissa, actress and Yiddish theater director, and historical oversight by Professor Samuel Kassow.

“Those Who Were There” podcast features audio from videotaped interviews conducted between 1979 up to the present. "Back in 1979, video was regarded as a remarkable, groundbreaking technology for documenting the experiences of survivors. The testimonies that resulted were and remain very powerful,” said Stephen Naron, director of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. “Today, by adapting our holdings to the podcast format, we have an opportunity to bring these intimate personal accounts of Holocaust survivors and witnesses to a world-wide listenership. After all, only a fraction of our more than 4,400 testimonies have ever been viewed. Every voice, every story is important, and the podcast is a chance to provide a public space for each survivor, one episode at a time.”
The podcast’s first season will feature 10 episodes, including accounts from Jewish survivors, non-Jewish witnesses and liberators. The memories shared express a wide range of experiences before, during and after the Second World War by those who experienced it. Still, it is only a small glimpse into the thousands of stories held in this diverse archive.

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Chapter 10: Aftermath

Nov 22 2023 33 mins  
In this final chapter of “Remembering Vilna,” several of the survivors whose stories we’ve featured tell of their journeys to safety and new beginnings, even as the traumas they experienced remained ever present.

Chapter 9: Judgment and Revenge

Nov 15 2023 31 mins  
At war’s end, Vilna’s survivors struggle to regain their health, look for missing family members, and search for ways to leave Europe for the United States or Palestine. But a small group join an effort to seek revenge in Nuremberg, where an international tribunal is underway.  

Preview: Into the Stacks at the YIVO

Sep 21 2022 22 mins  
Join co-producers Nahanni Rous and Eric Marcus on a research trip to the YIVO Institute in preparation for the upcoming season of Those Who Were There that focuses on the city of Vilna—a once thriving center of Jewish life and culture. Their guide on this exploratory dive into YIVO’s archives is Eddy Portnoy, YIVO’s Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions. Am

Chapter 8: Nazi Defeat

Nov 08 2023 38 mins  
July 1944. For nearly two weeks, the Nazis and the Soviets fight for every street and block in Vilna. When the smoke clears, Jews hiding in the sewers emerge into daylight while other survivors and Jewish partisans filter back into the devastated city.  

Chapter 7: Liquidation

Nov 02 2023 40 mins  
When the Nazis liquidate the Vilna ghetto, they send thousands of Jews to their deaths or to forced-labor camps. Others escape to the forest to join the partisans. Very few manage to hide. The Nazis also try to eliminate evidence of their efforts to murder Vilna’s Jews.  

Chapter 6: The Underground

Oct 26 2023 28 mins  
Young people in the ghetto organize an underground group with the hope of leading an uprising against the Nazis. They risk their lives to build an arsenal, but when it becomes clear most Jews in the ghetto don’t support them, many escape to the surrounding forest to join the partisans. 

Chapter 5: Ghetto Life

Oct 18 2023 30 mins  
Life in the Jewish ghetto demands vigilance and adaptation. Families improvise spaces for hiding. Food is smuggled at the risk of execution. And while young people start to organize a resistance, cultural and sporting events prove to be a much needed diversion.  

Chapter 4: The Ghetto

Oct 10 2023 33 mins  
They are given minutes to pack. A suitcase, a sheet-wrapped bundle, whatever they can carry. Thousands of the city’s Jews are marched at gunpoint to the newly enclosed Jewish ghettos, where the previous inhabitants have already been murdered.

Chapter 3: Nazi Invasion

Oct 04 2023 25 mins  
When Germany attacks the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis occupy Vilna and begin imposing their harsh antisemitic rule, banning Jews from sidewalks, requiring the wearing of an identifying yellow star, and worse. “Within just a few days,” Mira Verbin recalls, “they started kidnapping Jews.”

Chapter 2: In the Shadow of War

Sep 28 2023 29 mins  
With the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the country is split between the Nazi invaders and the Soviet Union. Vilna winds up in the hands of the Soviets, then the Lithuanians, then the Soviets again, who set about seizing property and businesses, and arresting and deporting perceived enemies of the state.