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First Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors

Primera Persona Serie de Podcasts

More than 70 years after the Holocaust, hatred, antisemitism, and genocide still threaten our world. The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades and remind us of the constant need to be vigilant citizens and to stop injustice, prejudice, and hatred wherever and whenever they occur.

This podcast series features excerpts from 48 interviews with Holocaust survivors conducted at the Museum as part of our First Person public program. Listen to these interview excerpts below. You can also watch video recordings of interviews from our First Person seasons here.

First Person is made possible by generous support from the Louis Franklin Smith Foundation with additional funding from the Arlene and Daniel Fisher Foundation.

Esta serie de podcasts presenta extractos de entrevistas con sobrevivientes del Holocausto realizados para el programa público, Primera Persona: conversaciones con sobrevivientes del Holocausto.

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  • Erika Eckstut: A Young Girl’s Experience in the Ghetto

    Erika Eckstut discusses the difficulties and dangers of life in the Czernowitz ghetto in what was then Romania (and today is western Ukraine). Erika was an adventurous teenager and her father went to great lengths to protect her and maintain her education.

  • Marcel Drimer: Escaping the "Concert of Death"

    Marcel Drimer, his sister, and mother hid in a wheat field while a German aktion—a violent operation against Jewish civilians— occurred in their town of Drohobycz, Poland, in August 1942.

  • Leon Merrick: Importance of Work in the Lodz Ghetto

    Leon Merrick's job delivering mail in the Lodz ghetto became all the more difficult over time as Nazi deportations to the extermination camps increased and he was often given the task of delivering notices for deportation.

  • Leon Merrick: Evacuation and Arrival at Buchenwald

    In December 1944, as the Soviet army approached the slave labor camp in Poland where Leon Merrick was imprisoned, the Germans evacuated him to the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. Leon shares his recollections of the evacuation and his first day in Buchenwald.

  • Martin Weiss: Selection at Auschwitz

    Martin Weiss discusses his deportation in May 1944 from the ghetto in Munkacs, then part of Hungary, and his arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi killing center.

  • Antony Polonsky

    Antony Polonsky has learned that there are no simple answers to the large questions of history, no single view of the past. Any view of history must incorporate many truths, including some that may be difficult to accept.

  • Deborah Lipstadt

    When Holocaust denier David Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt for libel in a British court, she experienced what she called "the world of difference between reading about antisemitism and hearing it up close and personal."

  • Erica Lehrer

    Erica Lehrer founded the Centre for Ethnographic Research and Exhibition in the Aftermath of Violence at Concordia University. In 2013, she curated “Souvenir, Talisman, Toy,” an exhibition of Polish-made figurines depicting Jews. And she is the author of Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places.

This Section

Survivor Reflections and Testimonies
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Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.