Our Collection of Holocaust-Survivor Testimonies

The Gross Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Ramapo College of New Jersey recorded 136 video testimonies with Holocaust survivors between 1990 and 2011. Most took place between 1990 and 1995. One survivor left two testimonies and two survivors share a single screen. Though the primary language of most of the videos is English, two survivors elected to tell their stories in Yiddish.

The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University maintains our collection, which comprises a fraction of their nearly 4,700 testimonies. Thanks to the archive’s generosity, Ramapo students, faculty, staff, and visitors have on-campus (and VPN) access to all of the Fortunoff testimonies via Potter Library.

Kristallnacht Mapping Project, Fall 2022

Börnerplatz Synagogue in Frankfurt burns on Kristallnacht via Wikicommons

Students in Dr. Jacob Ari Labendz’s Fall 2022 course on the history of the Holocaust used free, online narrative-mapping tools via Esri to create presentations based upon testimonies from survivors who witnessed Kristallnacht and settled in our region. Students also drew from the material they covered in class. Each Story Map follows the entire lifepath of a single survivor and includes clips from their testimonies. A map traces their movement through Europe and beyond.

Thirty-one of the testimonies in our collection reference Kristallnacht, a nationwide pogrom that Nazis and their supporters perpetrated against Jews in Germany on November 9 and 10, 1938. With the protection of police and fire brigades, members of the SA (Strumabteilung), the Hitler Youth, and Nazi officials in civilian garb burned 267 synagogues, ransacked 7,500+ Jewish-owned businesses and homes, sent 30,000 Jews (mostly young men) to concentration camps, and murdered 91 individuals. The two nights, which witnessed widespread acts of savagery and humiliation, as well as the confiscation of Jewish community archives, served as a turning point in Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jewish minority.

On November 9, 2022, Ramapo students presented their mapping projects at a public commemoration of the eighty-fourth anniversary of Kristallnacht, hosted by Congregation Beth Haverim Shir Shalom, just down the street from Ramapo College in Mahwah, NJ. (See the program for the commemoration below.) This project demonstrated to students the enduring, local legacies of Nazism, while forging ties of empathy, solidarity, and learning between Ramapo and our regional community—a key element of the Gross Center’s mission.

Click on the tiles below to view the story maps

Peter A. by Ryan Kvopka

Jack A. by Dale Schambelan

Anne B. by Faith Keener

Judith B. by Shannon DeCicco

Golly D. by Micky Steidle

Irena F. by Ivan Martinez

Hella H. by Keila Fane

Laure K. by Lindsay Tyrrell

Moses L. by Jeffrey Horn

Irma M. by Bella Gregory

David S. by Niall Steinberg

Henry S. by Amanda Williams

Hildegard S. by Nick Kruger

Norbert S. by Lionel Chen

Jerry W. by Skylar McMahon

Program from the Commemoration on November 9, 2022

Coverage by Local Media

Larry Yudelson, “And the Undergraduates Shall Teach Them,” Jewish Standard (11/02/22)

Logan Williamson, “Kristallnacht Remembrance in Mahwah to Feature Ramapo Student Research,” Mahwah Patch (11/03/2022)

Pictures from the Commemoration