Emmanuel Ringelblum Collection of Oral History Memoirs of the Holocaust (MS-215)

The Emmanuel Ringelblum Collection of Oral History Memoirs of the Holocaust is divided into two record groups: Group A: Dr. Charles R. Berry's The Survivors of the Holocaust Oral History Project, and Group B: Renate Frydman's "Faces of the Holocaust" Project. Note that reference access to the original analog audio and/or video is restricted; a digitized version must be used instead.

Group A, Dr. Charles R. Berry's The Survivors of the Holocaust Oral History Project, consists of 3 series:

Series I, Oral History Interviews and Transcripts, consists audio-only interviews conducted with thirty-five individuals between 1978 and 1988. The stories of some of the older subjects begin during the early decades of the twentieth century and trace the individual's life up to the day of the interview. Not all of the interviewees were incarcerated in concentration camps, but each had his or her life greatly altered by the Nazi regime. Each interview also has a typed transcript. The total interview time recorded with each person ranges from less than an hour to multiple hours. The series is arranged alphabetically by last name, and numbered during original processing, with the exception of the Kate Kahn, which is listed last due to not having been listed in the original finding aid (and therefore not being assigned a number originally). The numbering was used in the filenames of the original digitization of the first 34 interviews; the Kate Kahn interview was not digitized at the time, probably due to the poor quality of the audio on this interview. Access to the original audio cassettes is restricted, so researchers should use the digitized access versions, which are available in the E-Archives or the online access versions in CORE Scholar. The transcripts are also available in CORE Scholar.

Series II: Dr. Hans Liebermann Memorial Lecture Recordings, consists of audio and video recordings of lectures presented and funded as part of Dr. Berry's project. There were three lectures, one per year for three years, from 1980 to 1982. The speakers were Dr. Franklin H. Littell (1980), Dr. Leon Bass (1981), and Dr. Helen Epstein (1982). The series also includes limited background material on the lecturers, such as curriculum vitae, photograph, and/or press release. The materials in this series are arranged chronologically by lecture. Additional background information about the lecturers and the planning of the programs can be found in MS-239: Survivors of the Holocaust Oral History Project Records (Dr. Charles Berry's Papers).

Series III: Additional Memoirs and Recordings, consists of two publications and one unidentified audio recording (1/4" audio reel). The publications include: "Reflections by Jewish Survivors from Mannheim" (1990), compiled by Robert Kahn of Dayton; and two copies of "My Life in Two Worlds" (1989), a memoir by Lotte Orgler Liebermann.

Researchers interested primarily in the administrative and historical details of Dr. Charles Berry's project itself (process, funding, etc.), rather than its products (the interviews), should refer to MS-239: Survivors of the Holocaust Oral History Project Records (Dr. Charles Berry's Papers), available at Wright State University Libraries' Special Collections and Archives.

Group B, Renate Frydman's "Faces of the Holocaust" Project, consists of fifteen video interviews conducted specifically for the purpose of supplementing classroom education on the topic of the Holocaust. The interviews, conducted in 1986-1987 and 1994-1995, document the stories of sixteen individuals, including Holocaust survivors, children of survivors, liberators, a protector, and an exchange student. The video programs are less than 1 hour long per interviewee, with many of them being less than 30 minutes.

For both Group A and Group B, brief summaries of each individual interview can be found in a Scope and Content Note at the subseries or file level (as applicable), and these generally include some biograpihcal details about each interviewee. The summaries for Group A, Series I, were written by Andrew Harris, metadata librarian, at the time that the interviews were uploaded to CORE Scholar. The summaries for Group B were reproduced from a brochure created by the Dayton Holocaust Resource Center.