LAUNCHING THE AJR REFUGEE VOICES TESTIMONY ARCHIVE
The launch of the AJR REFUGEE VOICES TESTIMONY ARCHIVE, a ground-breaking collection of Holocaust oral histories took place last week at the Wiener Holocaust Library to coincide with the 81st anniversary of the Kristallnacht. A group of notable speakers included Kindertransportee from Cologne, Kurt Marx, and Lord Daniel Finkelstein and Tamara Finkelstein, whose mother Mirjam survived Bergen-Belsen and whose testimony was recorded for the Refugee Voices Archive in 2006.
Ahead of the event, a press conference was held where media had the opportunity to meet with interviewees who shared their story with the Refugee Voices Archive. Refugee Voices interviewees included; Ann and Bob Kirk, Freddy Kosten, Eve Willman, Jackie Young, Kurt Marx and Lilian Levy.
Kurt Marx recalls why he was so willing to take part in this project, “By telling my story, I wanted to raise awareness of the fate of my parents who were deported to Minsk and killed at Maly Trostinec. My hope is that this Archive will help create awareness for future generations about the fate of the Jews in the Holocaust.”
Dr Bea Lewkowicz, AJR Refugee Voices Director commented on the Archive, “The Refugee Voices Oral Histories present us with a unique ‘history from below’, narrated by individuals who experienced major historical and political events in the 1930s and 1940s and whose lives were profoundly affected by the experiences of persecution, separation, emigration, and displacement and resettlement. While most interviewees were banished from their homelands, their memories remained.”
She went on to state, “we are very proud to have conducted almost 250 interviews and would like to invite family members, researchers, teachers, students and the general public to listen, engage, learn, and take inspiration from the many different voices and experiences the AJR Refugee Voices Archive has recorded.
At the launch Bea shared her reflections on the making of the Refugee Voices Archive and introduced the newly developed website. She had a conversation with Kurt Marx who recalled his experience of Kristallnacht in Cologne and Lord Finkelstein and his sister Tamara Finkelstein, who commented on the interviews of their parents Mirjam Finkelstein and Ludwik Finkelstein. Lord Finkelstein underlined that as a Times columnist and political commentator his parents story has been an invaluable resource to him and that from his ‘direct experience’ he can say how important the archive is for telling the story to wider audiences. Tamara, permanent secretary for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, also stated how important the interviews were to her personally, as ‘there are things that I learnt from the interviews which are very precious to me, things that they can no longer tell me’. She also described how she had used the Refugee Voices recording of her mother in Holocaust Memorial Day presentations to her fellow civil servants.
Susanna Kleeman demonstrated how the material of the Archive has been used for the Refugee Voices Social media channels, such as Twitter and Instagram, while Moses Seitler recounted his experiences on having used the Refugee Voices Collection for the research on his Master’s Thesis at Oxford University.
AJR’s Head of Educational Grants & Projects, Alex Maws, introduced his podcast series titled Kindertransport – Remembering & Rethinking, which has used extensive excerpts from the Archive. The first podcast episode was aired on 7 November to coincide with the launch. To listen to this and others in the series, please listen visit: https://www.ajrrefugeevoices.org.uk/podcast
December marks the publishing of the first of a series of testimonies taken directly from the Refugee Voices Archive in the AJR Journal. The first
testimony will be about Mirjam Finkelstein, whose short film clip was shared on the Refugee Voices Twitter account, following the launch, and has since been viewed over 52K times.
View the film at: https://www.ajrrefugeevoices.org.uk/films
To learn more about the AJR Refugee Voices Testimony Archive, please visit: www.ajrrefugeevoices.co.uk
Thanks to Adam Soller Photography for taking the pictures at the event.