February 17, 2014

New Online Holocaust Archive Tells Untold Stories of Heroism


A new Hebrew University website  

(http://www.hum.huji.ac.il/english/units.php?cat=4246)

Sponsored by the school's Oral History Division, allows users to search and access 900 previously unavailable Holocaust-related voice recordings and transcripts. Many of the interviews include testimonies recorded in the 1930s, constituting some of the earliest recorded oral history archives of the Holocaust.

The site, which goes on line Thursday, was established to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Kristallnacht attacks of November 9-10, 1938.

Even before the website's formal launch, several families were surprised to discover in the collection their relatives’ Holocaust testimonies, which in some cases they didn't know existed, and which feature important acts of heroism and rescue that were previously unknown, even to family members of the interviewees.

One of the interviewees, Tova Gusta Nordlicht, discussed her experience in the Polish resistance, recounting incidents that family members had never heard before. Also previously unknown as the work of Laslo Samushi, who helped rescue Jewish children in Hungary from 1944 until the liberation of the country by allied troops.

Even Dar family discovered an interview with their grandfather Simcha Even Dar, in which he described his involvement in the Bricha movement (the underground organized effort that helped Jewish Holocaust survivors escape post-World War II Europe to pre-state Israel) and Aliyah Bet (immigration by Jews to pre-state Israel in violation of British restrictions).

Holocaust Archive - Read More 





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