Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust

In Memoriam: Renee Hartman (1933-2025)

Renee Hartman was one of the first four survivors to give testimony to the Fortunoff Archive's predecessor organization in 1979.  In this podcast episode, she describes h

Chapter 10: Aftermath

In this final chapter of “Remembering Vilna,” several of the survivors whose stories we’ve featured tell of their journeys to safety and new beginnings, even as the traum

Chapter 9: Judgment and Revenge

At war’s end, Vilna’s survivors struggle to regain their health, look for missing family members, and search for ways to leave Europe for the United States or Palestine.

Chapter 8: Nazi Defeat

July 1944. For nearly two weeks, the Nazis and the Soviets fight for every street and block in Vilna. When the smoke clears, Jews hiding in the sewers emerge into dayligh

Chapter 7: Liquidation

When the Nazis liquidate the Vilna ghetto, they send thousands of Jews to their deaths or to forced-labor camps. Others escape to the forest to join the partisans. Very f

Chapter 6: The Underground

Young people in the ghetto organize an underground group with the hope of leading an uprising against the Nazis. They risk their lives to build an arsenal, but when it be

Chapter 5: Ghetto Life

Life in the Jewish ghetto demands vigilance and adaptation. Families improvise spaces for hiding. Food is smuggled at the risk of execution. And while young people start

Chapter 4: The Ghetto

They are given minutes to pack. A suitcase, a sheet-wrapped bundle, whatever they can carry. Thousands of the city’s Jews are marched at gunpoint to the newly enclosed Je

Chapter 3: Nazi Invasion

When Germany attacks the Soviet Union in 1941, the Nazis occupy Vilna and begin imposing their harsh antisemitic rule, banning Jews from sidewalks, requiring the wearing

Chapter 2: In the Shadow of War

With the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, the country is split between the Nazi invaders and the Soviet Union. Vilna winds up in the hands of the Soviets,

Chapter 1: Childhood Memories

Recollections of life before 1939 evoke the rich diversity of Vilna’s thriving Jewish community, including its multiple synagogues and political and social organizations.

Introduction: Remembering Vilna

“Those Who Were There” co-producers Nahanni Rous and Eric Marcus introduce a few of the voices that, over the course of 10 episodes, will bring to life the once-vibrant J

Preview: Into the Stacks at the YIVO

Join co-producers Nahanni Rous and Eric Marcus on a research trip to the YIVO Institute in preparation for the upcoming season of Those Who Were There that focuses on the

Season 1, Episode 7 — Leonard Linton

Leonard Linton's story spans half the globe—from Japan to Germany, France, New York, and back to Germany, where as a 23-year-old U.S. soldier he happened upon a concentra

Season 1, Episode 6 — Renee Hartman

Renee Hartman was just a child when the Nazis swept into Czechoslovakia.  Her parents and sister were deaf, so she became her family’s ears, alert to the sound of the Ges

Season 1, Episode 5 — Arne Brun Lie

Eighteen-year-old Arne Brun Lie answered the patriotic call to join the Norwegian resistance.  But instead of fighting for his nation’s freedom, he found himself in the h

Season 1, Episode 4 — Sally Finkelstein Horwitz

After liberation from a slave labor camp, Sally Finkelstein Horwitz and her sister returned to Poland where anti-Jewish pogroms forced them to seek refuge in Germany.

Season 1, Episode 3 — Heda Kovaly

When Heda Kovaly was deported from Prague to the Lodz ghetto, along with thousands of other Jews, she never imagined that of her entire extended family, only she and her

Season 1, Episode 2 — Leon Bass

  Leon Bass faced racism growing up in Philadelphia, confronted it in the Army, and discovered its “ultimate” endpoint at a German concentration camp called Buchenwald

Season 1, Episode 1—Martin Schiller

As a little boy, Martin Schiller was sent to a slave labor camp in Poland along with his family. Separated from his mother, Martin never lost hope of being reunited with