Jewish Historical Institute

Zydowski Instytut Historyczny

Holocaust Survivor Testimonies Catalogue

Relacje z Zaglady Inwentarz

Volumes I, II, III

Extracted from these volumes by Mark Halpern

Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw
Before the War Left: Judaic Library (ca 1930)  Right: Great Synagogue (ca 1875)		Today Left: Jewish Historical Institute  Right: Blue Tower

These three volumes are summaries of one of the most valuable archival collections at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. They contain summaries of the early testimonies by Jews who survived the Holocaust and some Righteous Gentiles who provided comfort to Jews. 

This unique collection was the product of the Jewish Historical Commission, a volunteer organization founded in August 1944 in Lublin. This Commission would become the Jewish Historical Institute in 1947. The documents relate events as the victims themselves experienced them. Testimonies were taken in Lublin, Lodz, Bialystok, Warsaw, and Krakow from children and adults returning from concentration camps, hiding places, living on the Aryan side with false papers, and partisan forests.

These three volumes contain information on 3000 testimonies, which cover less than half of the collection of 7300 testimonies. Four more volumes are planned. 

The Voices from the Ashes Project  will translate into English 500 of the 7,300 testimonies. The Jewish Historical Institute, with assistance from the Voices from the Ashes Foundation, will undertake the translation into English of the first 500 testimonies over a period of two years. These documents will be published making them available to the general public. Over the longer term, the objective is to translate and publish the entire collection. 

The BIALYGen project extracted about 250 testimony summaries of people who were born in or lived during the Holocaust in the BIALYGen region. You can access these summaries from an Excel file or by using the navigation bar below.

A few of these testimonies, both indexed and not yet contained in the three published volumes, have been translated to English and published on the web by Zabludower Tilford Bartman. Here are links to these translations.

BRAMSON, Izrael -- Document 7, Volume I

LOPATA, Paltiel -- not in Volumes I-III

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Last Updated on 19 February 2005.