ENGLISH CORNER, CON LINDA JIMÉNEZ – This week’s trivia question:  Why is a French boy scout song included in this collection?

In 1979 the Holocaust Survivors Film Project began taping the testimonies of survivors and witnesses in New Haven, Connecticut. In 1981 the video collection went to the Manuscripts and Archives department at Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library.  Since then it has grown to become an internationally renowned collection that, over the years, has influenced the way the history of the Holocaust is written, studied, and taught.

Stephen Naron, the Director of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, calls them “life stories”.  In some of the testimonies the survivors sing songs, or bits of songs, that they remember from the interwar period, ghettos or camps.  

The Songs from Testimonies project is a musical research and performance based on poems and songs recorded in the interviews with some of these Holocaust survivors.

The Fortunoff Archive asked their musician-in-residence, ethnomusicologist Zisl Slepovitch, to locate these songs, conduct research about the origins of each song, and then arrange and record versions with his ensemble. To date, three volumes of these songs have been recorded.  The latest, Shotns-Shadows, was just released last month.

This week we’re speaking with Stephen Naron and Zisl Slepovitch about the Fortunoff Archive and the Songs from Testimonies Project.