Podcasts

"We’re here to explore YIVO’s extraordinary archive, which we’ll be drawing from as we create an audio portrait of Vilna through the voices of the people who were there.”

“Vilna was once home to tens of thousands of Jews—more than a quarter of the population. By the end of the war, only a few thousand Jews had survived the Nazi genocide.”

“The whole town was geared to Jewishness. Academies, Hebrew schools, universities, theaters, libraries, … Every second street were synagogues.”

“And all of a sudden the Lithuanian Army walked in. I never heard the word 'Lithuanian' before and I never heard a word of Lithuanian language before.”

“We had to wear a yellow star... I did quite a number of those yellow stars that I painted on fabric and cut them out. And my mother sewn them on, on our clothes.”

“Any house that had a doorway to the outside, to the street, which was not included in the ghetto, they blocked it with, with bricks.”

“He had this feeling that in these terrible conditions, music, beginning of culture, will give the people a lift.”

"You had always prepared yourself to fight against the Germans... But suddenly you are standing in front of a crowd of Jews that has come to attack you."

“There were a few women that really attacked the soldiers, shouting into their faces, ‘Murderers!’ and they were shot on the spot.”

“We came out into the day of our liberation, which was a very scary day, because the whole city was burning and the smoke was just going up.”

“We appeared at the International [Military] Tribunal at Nuremberg... We played for the media from all over the world, and we wore concentration camp uniforms and the Stars of David while we were on stage.”

“Getting used to being in Israel was difficult. It was very hard, not knowing the language, knowing that no one is waiting for you at the port when you arrive.”

"Through their recorded testimonies, we get a small glimpse into the unimaginable experiences that shaped them—and shaped our world. Their voices are a stark reminder of the millions of people who did not live to tell their stories."

"And there was really no place to go. But my grandfather always contended that you don’t do anything. You stay put because, after all, he used to say, “Es iz nisht keyn hefke velt.” He meant that life had an orderly way of being conducted and that people who did nothing wrong need not be afraid of anything."

"We were sent to a kolkhoz, a collective farm, called Svobodnyi Trud, which means “free labor,” and we were free laborers. We were laborers that were only given to eat, but not paid anything else."

"I had seen an advertisement, that a big, big, big, more than a farm is looking for help. And, um, I wrote them a letter. Same story: we lost our parents, we have vacation, and we would like to work in our vacation, but only when, if I can bring my sister."

"I was cleaning barracks until one day the commander, Amon Göth, who was in charge of the camp, walked in in the barrack and made, made his selection. He pointed a finger at me and ordered me to be his servant in his house that was located in the camp."

"Nobody really, in their right mind, could imagine that, uh, that they could do, uh, things like this—just take innocent people, and murder, and put to gas chambers or something. Uh, nobody could imagine."

"We marched for days and days, and my older sister said she can’t march anymore, and a couple of times, she said she’s going to stop, she’s not going on. And there were a lot of people who did, and they shot them on the road. She said, “I don’t care if they shoot me, I’m not going anymore.” And at that point, she sat down on the side of the road, and, uh, my other sister and myself, we stayed with her."

"Something unexplainable happened—it was a miracle. One day a rumor was spread, which happened, which happened to be true later, that somebody went—he had some personal contact with the Japanese, uh, consulate in Kovno."

"I remember hiding in a cellar, and we were very, very quiet as the German troops were entering the city. And a baby started crying, and there was a candle on the windowsill. The windows were closed. In order for the Germans not to hear the baby cry, the mother was stifling the baby. And then a candle burnt, went out, and people were beginning to say that there was no air. Obviously, we could not stay anymore, and we ran somewhere."

"I was born in Salonika, Greece, on March 30, 1932. My mother’s family was, uh, Spanish. And, uh, it was agreed between the Spaniards and the Germans that, uh, my mother, my brother, and myself would be spared if the Spaniards would give us a visa to go to Spain. Uh, however, in order for us to be able to achieve this, we had to escape from Salonika into Athens"

"They opened the doors and we saw prisoners. They had striped uniform and a striped cap on it. And they were whispering, “Let the children go, let your children go,” in Jewish. We didn’t understand it. Why? Some people did; some people, some mothers would not let their children go, that’s for sure. Well, get off the train, I was holding my little sister’s hand, one of the younger sister hand."

Meet host Eleanor Reissa and hear excerpts of upcoming episodes featuring first-hand accounts of the Holocaust—drawn from the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University.

"One of the things I remember as a child coming out, I felt I had to tell the world what was happening. So, I remember the first few months in the yeshiva I would speak freely. I would tell the kids everything. I would tell my rabbi what happened and so on.

"Then one day, we went out on recess and one of the kids got a hold of me. We were all in a circle. And he said, 'Why don't you tell one of your bullshit stories.' And from that day on—this was 1946, '47—I did not say a word, I would say, till about five, seven years ago."

"Can you imagine? I put in three years of my life, put it on the line to make it possible for people like that young lady and that manager or whoever owned that store to function and enjoy the rights and privileges of Americans, and they were saying to me, just like the Nazis did, just like they told me down in the South, what they told my father, 'Leon, you're not good enough.'"

"And they let us get out of the train to bring some water—the young people. So they said, 'Out and get the water.' And I remember how we got out of the train and there was some, a pile of gravel. And there was this beautiful flower growing out of this mess. And it was a purple, beautiful, gorgeous flower. And I thought, This is the last flower I'm going to see."

"My sister came to get me because the communications were bad. She says they were killing Jewish people. They killed, at the time, some people in Kielce. And, um, my sister came to tell me that we have to get out of the small towns, because they were killing the Jewish people. This was after the war."

"I, I was, of course, very scared. But I thought, Oh, this is something I'll get away with. I played innocent. And then they took me down to the Norwegian Nazi police headquarter. And there everything really changed."

"We lived on the fourth floor in the apartment. And my parents were both deaf. And I had a deaf sister. So I became the ears. I would have to warn them that the transport was coming. And what I would do is we would all rush in the back room. And when they knocked on the door, we didn’t answer. We were in the back room just trying to be as quiet as possible. And we used to live in terror of these boots."

"I drove there, and when I arrived, an incredible sight greeted me. You can imagine that a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division is a fairly hardened individual. However, when I came into this concentration camp, I must say that, to this day— and this was many years ago—an incredible and really undescribable disgust, a feeling, a mixture of horror, repulsion... I am not good enough in utilizing any language to describe this adequately."

"I can’t begin to tell it because what it meant to be in hiding. The guy made a hole under the floor in the barn. The hole consisted of maybe as wide as I was—two feet—and as long as I was. You couldn’t turn. If you crawled in on your stomach, you remained on your stomach. If you crawled in on your back, you remained on your back. Sometimes, when it was quiet, he would pull me out by my legs and give me a chance to straighten up my bones, and give me a little food."

"They wanted me to work in the kitchen, being a Jew and being a girl. They told me to dissect a pig. When I looked at that, and I started doing it, I fainted flat. I couldn’t do it. I said, 'I’m volunteering for the patrol.' They used to call it razvedka. They say, 'You? A Jewish girl in the patrol?' I say, 'Yes.' I was given a horse. I was given ammunition. And I was given an assignment."

In October 1945, Celia Kassow gave birth to her son Sam in a German displaced persons camp. Seventy-five years later, Sam Kassow reflects on his mother’s life and an astonishing journey of discovery to his mother’s hometown in Eastern Europe.