“In the First Person” marks 45 years of video interviews with Holocaust survivors

The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies is presenting the first large-scale exhibition of videotaped interviews conducted with survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust.

The exhibition “In the First Person” opens on July 25 at Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. It marks the 45th anniversary of the first videotaped interview made by the Holocaust Survivors Film Project, a grassroots New Haven community initiative, whose early work formed the foundation of the library’s extensive video archive. The opening reception is on Sept. 26, from 5 to 7 p.m.

Powerful excerpts from 19 of the more than 4,000 video testimonies in the collection present the experiences of survivors and witnesses to the atrocities and genocide committed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.

The videos are presented alongside a display of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, documents, and other items from Yale Library collections that present a history of Jewish efforts to document anti-Jewish persecution by means of eyewitness accounts, from the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 through the Holocaust and its aftermath. 

Read more about the exhibition—on view until Jan. 28, 2025—in the “Yale News” article by Mike Cummings.

Learn more about the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies.

—Deborah Cannarella

Photograph by Allie Barton