Videotaped Testimonials

Most survivor narratives of genocidal acts generated in the twentieth century exist in written or audio format. If survivors spoke about their experience in front of a camera, it was either in a war crimes trial setting or for a documentary filmmaker. The development of easy-touse, affordable video technology in the early 1980s enabled oral history projects not only to record the voice but also the face of the interviewee. Early videotaping projects focused primarily on Holocaust survivors, while others gathered the testimonials of survivors of the Armenian genocide. Aging survivors, the awareness that their stories would soon be lost, and a growing trend toward a visually oriented society generated a multitude of videotaping projects in the 1980s and 1990s. The projects vary in size (amount of testimonies), scope (domestic vs. international), content (types of experiences covered), methodology (interview format and location of interview), and purpose (memorialization, therapy, research, education).

Survivor and remembrance groups as well as research- and education-oriented institutions such as universities, research centers, and museums began to recognize the need for visual history. From large institutions or projects that engage in local and international videotaping of Holocaust survivors (e.g., the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem) to smaller, locally oriented groups like memorial sites (e.g., the National Museum at Auschwitz, Ravensbrück Memorial Museum), videotaping survivors while they speak about their experience has become much more common among not only Jewish Holocaust survivors but also other victim groups and witnesses to the Nazi program of mass murder, such as the Sinti and Romani (so-called gypsy) survivors, rescuers, and liberators. By the end of 2003 an extraordinary amount of such survivor and witness accounts—estimated to number around 70,000—had been gathered worldwide. The majority (75%) of this massive data was collected by one project—the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. Founded by filmmaker Steven Spielberg, it began to videotape survivors and other witnesses in 1994 and concluded its collection phase by 1999. Unprecedented on many levels, as of 2004, the foundation remains the largest archive of videotaped testimonials of Jewish Holocaust survivors, Sinti and Romani survivors, and other witnesses.

Projects documenting genocidal crimes in places like Bosnia, Cambodia, and Rwanda as well as South Africa have consulted some of the larger Holocaust video archives on issues regarding videotaping survivors. The use of a video camera as a tool to create testimonials also plays a crucial role in a project called WITNESS. Founded in 1992 by the musician Peter Gabriel, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, and the Reebok Foundation, WITNESS provides guidance, encouragement, and funding to local grassroots efforts to document human rights abuses with a video camera and to use the resulting video to expose those abuses and stimulate change.

Videotaping techniques and interviewing styles vary widely, and numerous factors determine the most suitable methodology. The projected purpose of the testimonies, the financial resources available, and the intended location of the interviews are just a few elements to consider. Resources may impose limits on the kind of video-recording equipment available and thus influence the visual quality of the testimony. The quality of video may be important because the resulting testimonies could be intended for use in museum exhibits or documentaries, so broadcast-quality video may be required. Or, videotaping in remote geographic areas may limit the options on video equipment. Projects also differ in the choice of a specific setting for taping. There could be a number of different settings in which to conduct interviews: in a studio, interviewee's home, or another location relevant to the interviewee's experience. A studio can create a neutral environment, whereas the interviewee's home can provide a personal environment and degree of comfort that may help the interviewee to recall his or her memories in addition to providing a visual background unique to each interviewee. Videotaping testimonials on location of the former sites of persecution or genocidal acts can provide an additional visual and create a direct link between the past event (interviewee's narrative) and the present (a visual of the interviewee in the actual location) or give "physical evidence such as . . . forensic documentation of corpses or mass graves" (Stephenson, 2000, p. 44).

The size and intent of a project may determine whether the interview will be conducted with a time limit. If no such limitation exists, survivors have the opportunity to tell as much as they can remember and/or even correct previous statements in follow-up sessions. A time restriction is often implemented to enable a greater number of interviewees to tell their stories. The interviewing methodology ranges from a free-flowing approach, in which interviewers only ask questions for follow-up or clarification, to a more structured approach, in which interviewees are guided to tell their story in a more chronological manner, to those conducted in an investigatory manner. Historians interested in specific events and individuals involved in criminal investigations or trials prefer the more directed approach with as many clarifying questions asked as possible. However, this does not preclude other interviews from yielding equally important information. Ultimately, the "quality"—a very subjective and not easily defined descriptor—of an interview is shaped by the interviewee, not the interviewer. The interview may include descriptions of life before, during, and after the event. Some projects focus exclusively on the actual event and are less concerned with the before and after an approach often taken if the intent is to document the event for legal purposes or if the project's limited resources make a closer focus imperative. It is important to include narration on the life led before the act of genocide occurred if that way of life became extinct as a result. Therefore, allowing survivors to verbally recreate the past adds historical value. Equally important is the discussion of survivors' experiences after the event up to the time of taping, especially if the interview occurs many years after the fact. How does one cope with the experience? How does one go on living? Videotape also allows for the inclusion of additional documentary evidence-showing on camera a prisoner uniform worn in a concentration camp, a number tattooed on one's arm, or photos of family members who perished are just a few examples. A commonality exists among these approaches: allowing the survivors to tell the story in their own words.

First-person accounts have been considered by some as questionable historical resources. Memory is deemed too unreliable, particularly if testimonies are taken many years after the event. In 2000, however, historian Christopher Browning noted about his research on a Jewish forced labor camp, for which he used Holocaust survivor testimonies taken over several decades after World War II ended, that those testimonies were "more stable and less malleable" than he had anticipated (p. 91). The argument that only sources created at the time of the event are reliable should also be questioned. German documents created during the 1940s were often "designed to mislead rather than to inform, to hide rather than to reveal"(Bauer, 2001, p. 23). Videotaped survivor testimonies are especially crucial when historical knowledge has largely been based on perpetrator documentation and, as in the case of the Holocaust, the perpetrators tried to eradicate not only a people but also all documentation of that eradication itself.

Many efforts to collect Holocaust survivor testimonies audiovisually have been initiated to preserve the past and to educate future generations. Video records simultaneously the words, facial expressions, body language, and visual context surrounding survivors while they recount their experience and, as such, makes history not only come alive but also gives it a human dimension.

The videotaped interviews with Holocaust survivors and witnesses to the atrocities of World War II in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s present a unique opportunity for future generations of educators, students, and researchers. However, the faces and voices of survivors of other genocides should be included to create comprehensive documentation on genocides in general.

SEE ALSO Evidence; Films, Armenian Documentary; Films, Holocaust Documentary; Memoirs of Survivors; Memorials and Monuments; Television

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bauer, Yehuda (2001). Rethinking the Holocaust. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Browning, Christopher (2000). Nazi Policy, Jewish Workers, German Killers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ringelheim, Joan (1992). A Catalogue of Audio and Video Collections of Holocaust Testimony, 2nd edition. New York: Greenwood Press.

Stephenson, Michèle (2000). "Video for Change: A Practical Guide for Activists." Available from http://www.witness.org.

"The Archive". In the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation website. Available from http://www.vhf.org.

Totten, Samuel, ed. (1991). First-Person Accounts of Genocidal Acts Committed in the Twentieth Century: An Annotated Bibliography. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishers.

Karen Jungblut