More than 70 years after the Holocaust, hatred, antisemitism, and genocide still threaten our world. The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades and remind us of the constant need to be vigilant citizens and to stop injustice, prejudice, and hatred wherever and whenever they occur.
This podcast series features excerpts from 48 interviews with Holocaust survivors conducted at the Museum as part of our First Person public program. Listen to these interview excerpts below. You can also watch video recordings of interviews from our First Person seasons here.
First Person is made possible by generous support from the Louis Franklin Smith Foundation with additional funding from the Arlene and Daniel Fisher Foundation.
Estelle Laughlin discusses the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when German forces, intending to liquidate the ghetto on April 19, 1943, were stunned by an armed uprising from Jewish fighters. Estelle and her family hid in an underground bunker during the uprising but were eventually captured and deported.
Steven Fenves discusses being forced into a ghetto immediately following the German occupation of his hometown of Subotica, Yugoslavia, in March 1944. As his family was forced out of their home, they encountered a range of responses from their non-Jewish neighbors.
Helen Goldkind discusses the humiliation she and her family experienced as they were forced by the Germans to move from their hometown of Volosyanka to the Uzhgorod ghetto in Czechoslovakia in 1944.
Susan Taube discusses her deportation from Berlin to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia, and the days immediately following. She was deported in January, 1942, along with her mother, sister, and grandmother.
Charlene Schiff discusses her and her mother’s escape in 1942 from the Horochow ghetto in Poland. Soon after their escape, Charlene was separated from her mother. She spent the rest of the war looking for her mother and hiding for her life in the forests.
Nesse Godin discusses the day her father was rounded up and deported with a group of others in the Siauliai ghetto, in Lithuania. Nesse never saw him again.
Erika Eckstut discusses the difficulties and dangers of life in the Czernowitz ghetto in what was then Romania (and today is western Ukraine). Erika was an adventurous teenager and her father went to great lengths to protect her and maintain her education.
Leon Merrick's job delivering mail in the Lodz ghetto became all the more difficult over time as Nazi deportations to the extermination camps increased and he was often given the task of delivering notices for deportation.
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.