Precarious and Hidden: Roma and Sinti Testimonies at the Fortunoff Video Archive

Join via Zoom: https://uu-se.zoom.us/j/67591610982 

The Seminar provides information about the  Fortunoff  Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies (Yale University) and particularly focuses on the testimonies of Roma and Sinti survivors. In 1979, a grassroots organization, the Holocaust Survivors Film Project, began videotaping Holocaust survivors and witnesses in New Haven, Connecticut, and grew into the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies which opened its doors to the public in 1982. Since then, the  Fortunoff  Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies has initiated, recorded, and preserved witness testimonies in North and South America, Europe, and Israel. The collection of over 4,400 testimonies comprising more than 12,000 hours is available to researchers, educators, and the general public. The collection also contains dozens of testimonies of Roma and Sinti survivors. These testimonies represent some of the most hidden, and underexamined materials in the collection. The Archive has not begun a number of efforts to lift up these unique, and materials essential for writing the history of Roma genocide back into the hands of the communities and scholars who need them.

Stephen Naron has worked as an archivist/librarian since 2003, when he received his MSIS from the University of Texas, Austin (USA). Stephen pursued a Magister in Jewish studies/history at the Freie Universitaet Berlin and the Zentrum fuer Antisemitismusforschung, TU (Germany). He has worked with the Fortunoff Archive for more than 12 years, starting as an Archivist. Now, as director of the Fortunoff Archive, Stephen works within the wider research community to share access to our collection through the access site program, as well as writing and presenting on testimony for conferences, symposiums and class sessions inside and outside Yale. Stephen is also responsible for spearheading initiatives such as preservation and digital access to the collection; cooperative projects with other testimony collections; oversight of fellowship and research programs; and the production of the podcasts, ethnomusicological recordings, and the Archive’s documentary film series.