Songs
From Testimony
A musical research and performance based on poems and songs in the interviews with Holocaust survivors recorded at Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies.
Songs
From Testimony
A musical research and performance based on poems and songs in the interviews with Holocaust survivors recorded at Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies.
The Fortunoff Archive’s collection consists of more than 4,300 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses. Consisting of more than 12,000 hours of video material, the testimonies were recorded in more than a dozen different countries and in more than 20 different languages. There are more than 100 testimonies in the collection in which survivors recount poetry or sing musical compositions from the prewar, wartime and postwar periods.
The Fortunoff Archive asked musician-in-residence, Zisl Slepovitch, to locate these songs, conduct research about the origins of each song, and then arrange and record versions with his ensemble, featuring Sasha Lurje.
The songs and poems included on the forthcoming third volume, Shotn/Shadows, were sung or recounted in a number of testimonies and reflect the richness of Holocaust video testimonies as a unique form of documentation. Originally, these songs were sung individually and collectively, but in survivors’ testimonies they are recounted or performed by individuals. They thus remind us that the survivor singing them represents all those who did not survive to sing again, and remind us of the absence of the original audience.
The Fortunoff Archive’s collection consists of more than 4,300 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses. Consisting of more than 12,000 hours of video material, the testimonies were recorded in more than a dozen different countries and in more than 20 different languages. There are more than 100 testimonies in the collection in which survivors recount poetry or sing musical compositions from the prewar, wartime and postwar periods.