«I am here to bring this small part of Thessaloniki back to your community, so that you as researchers, students, teachers can use this material in your teaching and research». With that said Stephen Naron, director of the University of Fortunoff Holocaust Survivors’s Oral Testimony Archive Yalestarted at the Library Information Center of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (BKP-AUTH) the presentation of the history of the creation of one of the largest audiovisual history archives in the world, to which every member of the AUTh university community now has open and full access.
«At first glance it may seem strange for an archivist, who has come from a place thousands of kilometers away, to be somehow responsible for preserving a small part of the cultural heritage of Thessaloniki or even the destruction of the cultural heritage of Thessaloniki and its people“, Said Mr. Nero, explaining that”we keep a small piece of the history of your city in our archive, as well as small pieces of the history of thousands of other cities and communities across Europe».
In fact, he did not hide his emotion for how differently he experienced the testimonies of the survivors of the Thessaloniki Holocaust while visiting the city. “It is a very different experience to be in the natural place where the events you heard happened, to be able to walk the streets of Thessaloniki and see the places described in these testimonies.
“It is very moving to stand in Freedom Square for the first time and to see the place and to hear the voices in your head”, he observed. By entering in the file search engine the term “ThessalonikiA total of 61 results emerge with interviews with Holocaust survivors.
The important Archive was created in 1981. Since then, with the cooperation of many universities and other bodies, 4,696 audiovisual testimonies of Holocaust survivors have been collected and recorded in audiovisual format.
The members of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki – professors, students, researchers – are given the opportunity to attend all the testimonies, in whole or in part. The testimonies are dominated by English with 3,171 and the number of testimonies in French and Hebrew is significant.
The archive is fully digitized, and as its director explained, a huge project has been started to transcribe oral testimonies and texts, although until recently it was a choice not to do so, insisting on the power of image, voice, song, of all those elements which, as he noted, are impossible to transcribe into text.
«It is one of the largest audiovisual history archives in the world. The AUTh access to the Archive is free, upon agreement with the Fortunoff Archive within the partner site program. The file was acquired in 2019“, Said at the presentation event of the archive the head of the department of BKP-AUTh Angeliki Hatzigeorgiou.
“By recording as many testimonies as possible, the first goal of collecting testimonies is achieved by preserving the memory of the Holocaust. The next step, the place of these testimonies in education and research “, noted the librarian of the Acquisition Office of the Central Library of AUTh Xenia Agorogiannis.
“An integral part of the history of the city, as it includes testimonies of about 100 Greek Jews”, the archive was described by the chairman of the BKP-AUTh Committee, Professor Emilios Mavroudis, while the acting professor of the Chair of Jewish Studies of the Department of History and Archeology, AUTh Antoniou, remarked that it is about “extremely interesting collection, not only on the subject of the Holocaust but also on the subject of memory and oral testimony, which is challenging for the way the interview is conducted». As Mr. Nero explained, the methodology for recording the interviews – the most recent of which took place before the pandemic – is unique in that it allows survivors to testify and express themselves freely, without the guidance of a narrator who can to refer to the period, before during or after FP2, as well as without a time limit for the interview.
Follow Skai.gr on Google News
and be the first to know all the news
