The latest edition of The Voice is now available. Read about a junior high school project inspired by some of the Voice/Vision interviews. This issue also contains articles about this year's Holocaust and Armenian Genocide Commemoration and Professor Bolkosky's trip to Israel, where he conducted interviews with several of the "Winton Children."
In December 1938, Nicholas Winton--a British stock-broker on holiday in Prague--recognized the danger posed to the Jewish community by the impending Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia. Setting up an office in the lobby of his hotel, Winton helped raise money and secure paperwork for the transport of Jewish children from Czechoslovakia to England. In the following months, Winton was able to secure the transport of 669 Jewish children, sending them to England and putting them out of the reach of the Nazi regime.
In January 2008, the Gelman Education foundation of Ann Arbor donated $25,000 to the Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive at the University of Michigan-Dearborn in order to send the archive’s director, Professor Sidney Bolkosky, to Israel where he conducted interviews with 11 of the children who were saved by Winton.
These unique interviews are now available to the public via the Voice/Vision website.
Hugo MaromLisa KallaiHelen StranskyTamara SesslerKurt SternHanna RamrasRuth FedermanZyta EliahuMalka SternbergZivia Fischler and Baruch Spergel
Holocaust and Armenian Genocide Commemoration
Date: April 2, 2009 Time: 7 p.m.
The Berkowitz Gallery, The University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Light refreshments will be served.
Featured Speakers:
Samuel Totten, The University of Arkansas
"Confronting the Scourge of Genocide: From Knowledge to Action"
and
Roger Smith, College of William and Mary
"Should We Teach About Genocide? And If So, What Should We Teach?"
The Berkowitz Gallery is located on the third floor of the Mardigian Library on
the campus of the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
Free parking is available. For directions to UM-Dearborn and the Mardigian
Library please visit:
http://www.umd.umich.edu/maps_directions/
Refreshments: 7:00 p.m.
Presentations and Discussion: 7:30 p.m.
Event is free and open to the public.
Seating is limited.
RSVP to:
313-593-5236
Or by email at:
library-event-rsvp@umd.umich.edu
Event Sponsored By:
The Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive (UM-Dearborn), The Armenian Research Center (UM-Dearborn), The Armenian Studies Program (UM-Ann Arbor), The Cohn -Haddow Center for Judaic Studies (Wayne State University) and
The Mardigian Library (UM-Dearborn)
In August, 1982, The Holocaust Memorial Center in West Bloomfield asked me to assist them in starting an oral history collection of Holocaust survivors. Salvatore Katan, a Jewish survivor from Salonika, Greece, agreed to an interview. By 1982, I had completed some twenty audio and video interviews and the UM-Dearborn decided the project would be better served if it were more accessible to researchers and students. From the start, the University enthusiastically supported the undertaking, providing studio time, materials and a dedicated staff led by Greg Taylor, then a student who worked in the TV Studio. (Greg, head of technical services in the Studio, still oversees the technical aspects of the project).
For twenty-five years the UM-Dearborn has devotedly upheld the project, with the support of Provost Simpson, Chancellor Little, Dean Anderson-Levitt and Tim Richards, director of the Mardigian Library. The library staff--Barbara Kriigel, Beth Taylor, Janet Elkins and others have nurtured the collection--named the Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive--with extraordinary solicitude and professionalism. Six years ago, we hired Dr. Jamie Wraight as curator. Together they and others have crafted one of the most professional and useful Holocaust resources. The archive, which contains some three hundred interviews, has more than fifty testimonies on line--transcriptions and voices. We have received millions of "hits" and know of at least six scholarly works and numerous articles that have utilized the site.
Voice/Vision carefully and meticulously preserves memory and serves historical education. We have sent copies of all our materials to the Yale Fortunoff Archives and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. The archive is a tribute to our campus and those who conserve it.
Sidney Bolkosky
Director, Voice/Vision
