Let Them Speak: An Effort to Reconnect Communities of Survivors in a Digital Archive

Abstract

In 1979 the Holocaust Survivors Film Project began videotaping Holocaust survivors. Since then, its successor, the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, has recorded and preserved testimonies for decades. Having completed a large-scale digitization of the entire collection, the archive has pivoted to increasing digital access. As part of its transition to a fully digital archive, it has developed a web-based digital anthology. This anthology, titled Let Them Speak, allows researchers to study circa 3000 interviews from three collections: Fortunoff Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and USC Shoah Foundation. While digitization has helped alleviate one concern, long-term preservation, and opened new means of access, it raises several new challenges, technical, curatorial, and ethical. This chapter will elucidate some of these challenges.