Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Since 1981, Dr. Sidney Bolkosky, Professor of History at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, has interviewed Holocaust survivors. The University's Mardigian Library has been the repository of these interviews. It has been our privilege to provide a forum for those voices, "listening ears," as one survivor notes, and the facilities to record the testimonies. As a University of distinction, the campus has demonstrated its dignity and character because of the respect it has accorded the tapes and the people who made them.

This archive represents a gurantee of honest presentation--unembroidered, without dramatization, a scholarly yet austerely moving collection of information and insight. We have been and are engaged in rescuing fragments of fragments of memory. We have done that quietly, without fanfare, but with integrity and quality. Because of that, the project is what it is, does not need any hype or dramatization. It speaks for itself--literally.

Those who have had access to the tapes--including scholars, psychologists, historians, and more than 1,000 students--have found themselves riveted to their tape recorders or VCRs. Now the collection, as it grows, has obtained a potentially larger audience: copies of all the interviews rest in the archives of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum; copies of the videotapes are in the Yale Video Archives and the Holocaust Memorial Center in West Bloomfield, MI. Through the work of many individuals, that audience is now international and unbounded, crossing continents and oceans, disciplines, and professions.

MISSION: The Voice/Vision Archive promotes cultural, racial and religious understanding through unprecedented worldwide access to its collection of Holocaust survivor narratives. Our educational resources, programs and outreach provide quality Holocaust education to the metropolitan Detroit and global communities through engagement with teachers, civic groups and religious organizations.

VISION: The Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive seeks to strengthen the University of Michigan-Dearborn’s position as a welcoming and nurturing institution, which supports diversity among its students, faculty, staff, and scholarship. To accomplish this goal it is our vision to:

• Enable immediate connections to powerful, audio and video-taped oral histories of survivors who experienced the Holocaust
• Reach out to Michigan’s K-12 school-aged children, including photo presentations to students and educators, guided discussions, focused dialogues pertaining to class readings, etc.
• Develop and conduct content-specific workshops and colloquia aimed at metropolitan area educators
• Reach out to the metropolitan community’s, civic and religious organizations for the purpose of offering Holocaust education to their members
• Provide an online Holocaust education curriculum accessible to anyone
• Support Holocaust research by scholars, students, educators, and the general public through round-the-clock access to survivors’ testimonies
• Preserve the voices and memories of Holocaust survivors for future generations

In addition to collecting and preserving Holocaust survivor interviews, the Voice/Vision Archive has created several special collections that compliment or utilize the interviews in the collection: see here.

Interviews can be listened to here.