Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust is the only Holocaust history podcast dedicated to bringing the firsthand testimony of Holocaust survivors, liberators, and witnesses out of the archives. This season features 10 survivor testimonies recorded by the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in affiliation with the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. This season’s episodes are described below.
Introducing Season 2
This second season of Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust is produced in affiliation with the Museum of Jewish Heritage—A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. The Museum of Jewish Heritage began recording Holocaust testimonies in 1989. It was part of a cooperative effort with the Fortunoff Video Archive to document the experiences of Holocaust survivors and witnesses. In all, the Museum of Jewish Heritage gathered nearly 600 testimonies.
Episode 1: Sally Frishberg
High school teacher Sally Frishberg explains how her personal experience hiding from the Nazis led her to create one of the first public high school classes on the history of the Holocaust.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
Resources: Episode notes
Episode 2: Isaac Zieman
Isaac Zieman was a passionate young Zionist with plans to make a life in Palestine. Instead, the Nazi invasion of Latvia propelled him on a years-long journey that took him across the Soviet Union and Europe and finally to the United States.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
Resources: Episode notes
Episode 3: Annelies Herz
Teenage Annelies Herz saw that fellow Jewish forced laborers were disappearing. So to survive in wartime Germany, she and her twin sister went underground: they secured new identities and never stayed in one place for long.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
Resources: Episode notes
Episode 4: Helen Jonas
Deported to the Plaszów concentration camp, Helen Jonas faced almost certain death. Instead, she was chosen by Amon Göth—the camp’s notorious, brutal commandant—to be his servant.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
Resources: Episode notes
Episode 5: Abram Merczynski
When Abram Merczynski’s brother organized an orchestra in the Lodz ghetto, Abram promised himself that if he survived the war, he’d learn to play the violin. He lived—and kept his promise.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
Resources: Episode notes
Episode 6: Esther Schwartzman
As Polish Jews fled across the border into Hungary bearing stories of Nazi atrocities, Esther Schwartzman’s family and community didn’t believe that such things could happen to them. Then in early 1944, everything changed.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
Resources: Episode notes
Episode 7: Leon Pommers
Fleeing Warsaw ahead of the invading Nazis, concert pianist Leon Pommers was propelled into a perilous journey around the world in hopes of reuniting with his sister in America.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
Resources: Episode notes
Episode 8: Malka Baran
Malka Baran expressed her love of children by caring for a toddler hidden in the barracks of a concentration camp and teaching first grade at her DP camp. It was the start of her lifelong commitment to early-childhood education
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
Resources: Episode notes
Episode 9: Elias Recanati
When the Germans took control of the Greek city of Salonika, Elias Racanati’s family had one chance to escape—his mother’s family hailed from Spain. But they had to cross German-occupied Europe to get there.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
Resources: Episode notes
Episode 10: Judith Perlaki
Teenaged Judith Perlaki recalled cheating death twice after being deported from Hungary to Auschwitz. But most of her family wasn’t so fortunate. While assigned to sort the belongings of people sent to the gas chambers, Judith discovered the dresses of her little sister and aunt.
Listen: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher
Resources: Episode notes