Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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

An interview with Peri Berki, a Holocaust survivor, conducted by an unidentified interviewer. Peri Berki was born in 1900 in Hungary. After her husband was deported to a labor camp and their farmland taken away, Peri and her son lived in a ghetto with her sister and at one point, with thirty-nine other people, in a one-bedroom apartment. With the help of her husband and a Gentile innkeeper, they obtained false papers, moved to the Hungarian countryside, and assumed Gentile identities. Throughout the war, they posed as Gentiles, avoiding detection and receiving help from several strangers. When the war ended, the family was reunited and they again obtained false papers to immigrate to the United States.

An interview with Clara Dan, a Holocaust survivor, conducted by Kay Roth. Clara Dan was born in Tîrgu-Mures, Romania (later Hungary) in 1921. Clara was the youngest of three siblings. In the spring of 1944, Clara, her sister and her parents were rounded up and placed in a makeshift ghetto in Koloszvar, Hungary. After several weeks there, they were shipped to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Clara and her sister survived the selection on the ramp and were reunited in the camp. After some time in Auschwitz, Clara and her sister were sent to work in a bullet factory in Hundsfeld. When the Russians came too close to the area, the sisters were marched to Gross Rosen and then sent to Bergen-Belsen where the British Army liberated them. After the war, Clara and her sister were placed in a DP camp in Celle, Germany where they were reunited with their brother.

An interview with Bert Dan, a Holocaust survivor, conducted by Kay Roth. Bert Dan was born in Cluj, Romania in 1916. He served as a soldier in the Romanian army at the outbreak of World War II. After the Hungarians occupied Romania, he was arrested and imprisoned for a year; upon his release Bert was drafted into various labor camps and work details throughout Eastern Europe. During a forced march back to Hungary, he escaped with a group of other prisoners and was found by the Russian army. He was freed and eventually returned to Cluj. Bert began to work with Jewish committees helping to locate and assist Hungarian and Romanian Jews returning to their homes from Poland. He eventually set up a committee office in Prague, Czechoslovakia where he was reunited with his fiancée. They married after the end of the war and immigrated to the United States in 1949.

Esther Lupian was born in Minsk, Belorussia in 1936. Prior to the war, her father was proclaimed a dissident and was sent northward while her mother was left to take care of Esther and her brother Gresha. After the Germans occupied Minsk, the family was sent to the ghetto where they lived for two years. Gresha joined the partisans, was captured by the Germans, and sent to a death camp. Escaping the liquidation of the ghetto, Esther and her mother allied themselves with a group of partisans living in a nearby forest until they were liberated in 1945. Shortly thereafter, they were reunited with her father. Esther continued to live in Minsk until 1988 when she immigrated to the United States with her own children.

An interview with Abraham Asner, a Holocaust survivor, conducted by Sheri Weisberg. Abraham Asner was born in Nacha, Belarus in 1916. After the war broke out, Abraham and his brothers were sent to Radun ghetto as part of a labor force. They survived the liquidation of the ghetto in 1942 and became part of a partisan organization based in the nearby Natsher Pustshe forest. The brothers engaged in partisan activities and missions until they were liberated in 1945. A few years later, Abraham immigrated to Canada with his wife.