Introduction

History

Founders

Our concept

Activities

Taping

Cataloging

Training

Preservation

Research

Education

Conferences

Affiliate projects

About the Archive :: Training

A core group of interviewers in the New Haven area completed an eight-week training course in 1984, and continue to attend annual workshops. Training includes lectures by historians, required readings, critical viewing of testimonies, and in-depth discussion of our interviewing methodology, with the goal of teaching the interviewers to be empathic and highly informed listeners.

The Archive serves as a resource for other projects working to record witnesses to the Holocaust and other twentieth-century genocides. Many of the Archive's affiliate projects received extensive assistance in training their interviewers, most recently in Berlin and Bratislava. Additionally, the Archive consults for a variety of Holocaust-related organizations, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, the Bergen Belsen Memorial and Museum, and the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. The Video Archive has worked with organizations concerned with documenting genocides in Armenia, Bosnia, and Cambodia, and with Japanese-Americans interred in the United States during World War II. The Archive has advised these groups on matters including confidentiality and legal issues, pre-interview procedures, interviewing techniques and the taping environment, and cataloging methods.