Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust
Activity Overview
Episode publication activity over the past year
Episodes
In Memoriam: Renee Hartman (1933-2025)
12 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Renee Hartman was one of the first four survivors to give testimony to the Fortunoff Archive's predecessor organization in 1979. In this podcast...
Chapter 10: Aftermath
23 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
In this final chapter of “Remembering Vilna,” several of the survivors whose stories we’ve featured tell of their journeys to safety...
Chapter 9: Judgment and Revenge
15 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
At war’s end, Vilna’s survivors struggle to regain their health, look for missing family members, and search for ways to leave Europe for ...
Chapter 8: Nazi Defeat
09 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
July 1944. For nearly two weeks, the Nazis and the Soviets fight for every street and block in Vilna. When the smoke clears, Jews hiding in the sewers...
Chapter 7: Liquidation
02 Nov 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When the Nazis liquidate the Vilna ghetto, they send thousands of Jews to their deaths or to forced-labor camps. Others escape to the forest to join t...
Chapter 6: The Underground
26 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Young people in the ghetto organize an underground group with the hope of leading an uprising against the Nazis. They risk their lives to build an ars...
Chapter 5: Ghetto Life
19 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Life in the Jewish ghetto demands vigilance and adaptation. Families improvise spaces for hiding. Food is smuggled at the risk of execution. And while...
Chapter 4: The Ghetto
10 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
They are given minutes to pack. A suitcase, a sheet-wrapped bundle, whatever they can carry. Thousands of the city’s Jews are marched at gunpoin...
Chapter 3: Nazi Invasion
05 Oct 2023
Contributed by Lukas
When Germany attacks the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis occupy Vilna and begin imposing their harsh antisemitic rule, banning Jews from sidewalks, re...
Chapter 2: In the Shadow of War
28 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
With the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the country is split between the Nazi invaders and the Soviet Union. Vilna winds up in the ha...
Chapter 1: Childhood Memories
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Recollections of life before 1939 evoke the rich diversity of Vilna’s thriving Jewish community, including its multiple synagogues and political...
Introduction: Remembering Vilna
20 Sep 2023
Contributed by Lukas
“Those Who Were There” co-producers Nahanni Rous and Eric Marcus introduce a few of the voices that, over the course of 10 episodes, will ...
Preview: Into the Stacks at the YIVO
21 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Join co-producers Nahanni Rous and Eric Marcus on a research trip to the YIVO Institute in preparation for the upcoming season of Those Who Were There...
Episode 10 — Judith Perlaki
01 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Teenaged Judith Perlaki recalled cheating death twice after being deported from Hungary to Auschwitz. But most of her family wasn’t so fortunate...
Episode 9 — Elias Recanati
11 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
When the Germans took control of the Greek city of Salonika, Elias Racanati’s family had one chance to escape—his mother’s family ha...
Episode 8 — Malka Baran
18 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Malka Baran expressed her love of children by caring for a toddler hidden in the barracks of a concentration camp and teaching first grade at her DP c...
Episode 7 - Leon Pommers
28 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Fleeing Warsaw ahead of the invading Nazis, concert pianist Leon Pommers was propelled into a perilous journey around the world in hopes of reuniting ...
Episode 6 - Esther Schwartzman
07 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
As Polish Jews fled across the border into Hungary bearing stories of Nazi atrocities, Esther Schwartzman’s family and community didn’t be...
Episode 5 - Abram Merczynski
03 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When Abram Merczynski’s brother organized an orchestra in the Lodz ghetto, Abram promised himself that if he survived the war, he’d learn ...
Episode 4 - Helena Jonas
12 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Deported to the Plaszów concentration camp, Helen Jonas faced almost certain death. Instead, she was chosen by Amon Göth—the camp&rs...
Episode 3 - Annelies Herz
22 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Teenage Annelies Herz saw that fellow Jewish forced laborers were disappearing. So to survive in wartime Germany, she and her twin sister went undergr...
Episode 2 -- Isaac Zieman
01 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Isaac Zieman was a passionate young Zionist with plans to make a life in Palestine. Instead, the Nazi invasion of Latvia propelled him on a years-long...
Episode 1 -- Sally Frishberg
09 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
High school teacher Sally Frishberg used her childhood experience of being hidden for two years with her family in a Polish farmer’s attic to cr...
Season Two Introduction
09 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Hear excerpts from the second season of “Those Who Were There,” featuring testimonies drawn from the nearly 600 interviews conducted by th...
Episode 10 — Sam Kassow
16 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In October 1945, Celia Kassow gave birth to her son Sam in a German displaced persons camp. Seventy-five years later, Sam Kassow reflects on his mothe...
Episode 9 — Celia Kassow — Part 2
02 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
When Nazi troops seized the Polish farm where Celia Kassow was in hiding, she fled once again—this time into the forest, where she joined the So...
Episode 8 — Celia Kassow — Part 1
19 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When Nazi bombs fell from the sky, Celia Kassow fled her Polish boarding school and sought help from a classmate who lived nearby. The response? &ldqu...
Episode 7 — Leonard Linton
05 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Leonard Linton's story spans half the globe—from Japan to Germany, France, New York, and back to Germany, where as a 23-year-old U.S. soldier he...
Episode 6 — Renee Hartman
21 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Renee Hartman was just a child when the Nazis swept into Czechoslovakia. Her parents and sister were deaf, so she became her family’s ears...
Episode 5 — Arne Brun Lie
07 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Eighteen-year-old Arne Brun Lie answered the patriotic call to join the Norwegian resistance. But instead of fighting for his nation’s fre...
Episode 4 — Sally Finkelstein Horwitz
24 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
After liberation from a slave labor camp, Sally Finkelstein Horwitz and her sister returned to Poland where anti-Jewish pogroms forced them to seek re...
Episode 3 — Heda Kovaly
10 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
When Heda Kovaly was deported from Prague to the Lodz ghetto, along with thousands of other Jews, she never imagined that of her entire extended famil...
Episode 2 — Leon Bass
26 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Leon Bass faced racism growing up in Philadelphia, confronted it in the Army, and discovered its “ultimate” endpoint at a German c...
Episode 1—Martin Schiller
12 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As a little boy, Martin Schiller was sent to a slave labor camp in Poland along with his family. Separated from his mother, Martin never lost hope of ...
Series Introduction
12 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Meet host Eleanor Reissa and hear excerpts of upcoming episodes featuring first-hand accounts of the Holocaust—drawn from the Fortunoff Video Ar...