Das Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies Zwischen empathischem Zuhören und digitaler Technologie
Main Article Content
Abstract
The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University is a collection of more than 4,400 video recordings of Shoah witnesses, founded in 1979. This article describes how new technologies are being implemented and how the potential risks are being assessed and addressed. The archive’s approach to digital technologies is characterised by an effort to preserve the traditions of the archive, in particular to fulfil its ethical obligations towards the eyewitnesses, while at the same time meeting the needs of the research community and thus promoting the use of the collection. The Fortunoff Archive thus finds itself caught between the conflicting demands of empathetic listening and digital technology. Two digital projects are used as examples to show how the archive deals with this conflict in practice.
Bibliography: Naron, Stephen: Das Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Zwischen empathischem Zuhören und digitaler Technologie, Oral History und Lebensverlaufsanalysen, 1+2-2025, pp. 34-43.
Article Details
Literature
Hartman, Geoffrey H. (1997): The Cinema Animal. In: Yosefa Loshitzky (Hg.): Spielberg's Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler's List. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 69.
Jockusch, Laura (2012): Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe, New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199764556.001.0001
Laub, Dori (1992): In Testimony: Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York, Oxford: Routledge.
Laub, Dori (2000), Zeugnis ablegen oder Die Schwierigkeiten des Zuhörens. In: Ulrich Baer (Hg.): „Niemand zeugt für den Zeugen“. Erinnerungskultur und historische Verantwortung nach der Shoah, Frankfurt am Main, 68-83.
Naron, Stephen und Gabor Mihaly Toth (2020): Let Them Speak: An Effort to Reconnect Communities of Survivors in a Digital Archive. In: Eve Monique Zucker und David John Simon (Hg.): Mass Violence and Memory in the Digital Age. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi-org.yale.idm.oclc.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39395-3_4.
Rudof, Joanne W. (2012): A Yale University and New Haven Community Project: From Local to Global, https://fortunoff.library.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/local_to_global.pdf.
Shenker, Noah (2015): Reframing Holocaust Testimony. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. https://doi.org/10.2979/11036.0
Taubitz, Jan (2016): Holocaust Oral History und das lange Ende der Zeitzeugenschaft. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag. https://doi.org/10.5771/9783835329287
Toth, Gabor Mihaly (2021): Yale Fortunoff Archive. In Search of the Drowned: Testimonies and Testimonial Fragments of the Holocaust, https://lts.fortunoff.library.yale.edu/ (12.9.2025).
Tran, Khue (2020): Archive managers plan data collab. In: Yale News, 15.1.2020, https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2020/01/15/nazi-archive-managers-plan-collab/ (12.9.2025).