In the First Person: The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

Exhibit at the Beinecke, co-curated by Kostanze Kunst and Stephen Naron (which opened to the public in late July 2024). 

The exhibit, which has been in the works for 16 months, is tied to the 45th anniversary of the first videotaping of survivor testimony by the Holocaust Survivor Film Project in May of 1979.  In the First Person will be the first large-scale public exhibition of testimony footage from the collection at Yale.

The testimonies are embedded in a display of books, pamphlets, manuscripts, documents, and other items from the collections of Yale University Library that present a history of Jewish efforts to document anti-Jewish persecution through eyewitness accounts from the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 through the Holocaust and its aftermath.

Taken together, these materials reveal long-standing Jewish practices of documentation following periods of destruction and violence; as pathbreaking as the Fortunoff Archive has been by harnessing video technology, it simultaneously participates in a Jewish tradition that extends as far back as the Biblical commandment to remember the past.

There will be a variety of opportunities for engagement and dialogue with faculty and students surrounding this exhibit at the start of the fall term, and the official exhibit opening and reception will be held on Thursday, September 26 from 5-7 pm.