The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University consists of over 4,400 testimonies that record the experiences of over 4,000 survivors, witnesses, bystanders and liberators of the Holocaust. The collection documents the impact of the Holocaust over a broad swath of Nazi-occupied Europe, with interviewees from nineteen countries. The testimonies include survivors that are Jewish, Roma and Sinti, Jehovah Witnesses and political prisoners; resistors and rescuers; and liberators who served in the armed forces. Testimonies detail a wide range of experiences, including imprisonment in concentration camps, living in hiding, fighting with partisans or the resistance, rescuing and protecting those targeted by Nazi persecution, and escape to Allied or neutral countries.
Brooklyn College is the only Access Site for the Archive in the Borough of Brooklyn. See below for how to access the Archives through the Brooklyn College Library.
Go to the main Fortunoff Archive site at https://brooklyn.ezproxy.cuny.edu/login?url=https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/. Click on Log In, and then Join Now. Please check the password help if you have trouble creating a password.
Note: You must use the link above in order to authenticate successfully as a member of Brooklyn College in order to access the archive from off-campus.
After you submit the form, you will receive a confirmation email. Check your spam if it doesn’t show up in your inbox. This is just to verify you are indeed a human and not a bot.
Return to https://brooklyn.ezproxy.cuny.edu/login?url=https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/. Login if necessary, and then enter a search term, such as a town name, a concentration camp, or a ghetto in the search bar at the top of the page. You can also click in the find content box and hit return. If you have trouble, or want to know more about searching the Archive, consult the Fortunoff Archive Search Tips page.
Once you have submitted your search, click on a testimony in the search results and request access. Please note that Fortunoff records truncate last names of those who gave testimony to protect their privacy. If you are looking for a specific person’s testimony, either shorten their last name to the first initial (“Eva B.”) or contact the archive directly. You only need to request access to one testimony to obtain viewing rights for the entire collection. You should receive an approval email a few minutes after you make your request.
Once you get the approval email, you can view testimonies. Just refresh your browser.
In addition to searching the Archive directly, users can take advantage of the following tools.
