Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 28, 2000

Volume 28, Number 30

'Witness,' a documentary based on Yale's
Holocaust testimony archive, wins film award

"Witness: Voices from the Holocaust," a documentary based on material collected by Yale's Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, has won the Houston WorldFest International Film Festival's Best in Category and Special Jury awards. The prizes were presented on April 15.

The film will be aired nationally on PBS on May 1 to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day. Local broadcast time is 10 p.m.

"Nothing is more compelling than the voices of the survivors and witnesses," said Joann Rudof, archivist for the Fortunoff Video Archive, which is the world's first survivor video-testimony project. "The words of those who were there convey the reality of the event without the intrusion of celebrity narrators or sound tracks, and they help us to understand the human dimensions of this 20th-century atrocity."

The 86-minute color film has won numerous awards, including the Gold Medal at the Flagstaff International Film Festival, Best Documentary at the Nassau Independent Cinema Expo, Best Social Documentary at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival and the Bronze Medal from the National Educational Media Network.

"The awards and recognition received by 'Witness' have been particularly gratifying because they confirm my belief that audiences don't require 'happy endings' and mythologized versions of the Holocaust," Rudof added.

In conjunction with the release of the documentary, the Fortunoff Video Archive has published a companion book, also titled "Witness: Voices from the Holocaust" (The Free Press). The book creates a single narrative out of the first-person accounts of 27 witnesses, including Jews and non-Jews, American POWs, GIs who liberated the camps, a member of the Hitler Youth, a Jesuit priest, resistance fighters and child survivors. The book incorporates experiences in the ghettos, concentration and death camps, as well as liberation and post-liberation challenges.

Since 1979, Yale has videotaped interviews with more than 4,000 Holocaust survivors. The collection, curated by Rudof, is housed in Sterling Memorial Library.

-- By Gila Reinstein

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