Refugee Voices
"Refugee Voices" is the oral history collection of the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR). It contains 150 biographical video interviews of Jewish survivors of National Socialism living in Great Britain . The archive comprises a total of 450 interview hours. The project was commissioned by the organization in 2003 and led by Dr. Anthony Grenville and Dr. Bea Lewkowicz headed. Mainly people were interviewed who had not yet been interviewed or only rarely interviewed in the context of other projects. The interviews were conducted in English.
Most of the interviewees are members of the AJR themselves. Most of them were born in Germany and Austria and immigrated to Great Britain during or after National Socialism . In addition to life in National Socialist Germany and in the countries occupied by Germany, the interviews particularly describe experiences of migration and exile . The interviewees talk about escape attempts and child transports, separation from family members, arriving in a foreign country and learning a new language, living with memories of home and family and coping with everyday life in Great Britain during and after the war. A special focus of the interviews is on reports on the experiences of emigration and the integration into British society.
Preparation of the interviews
The archive is specially designed for use in education and research. The video interviews are fully transcribed. The transcriptions are provided with a time code, which makes it easy to find the corresponding points in the video recordings and vice versa. In addition, biographical information on the interviewees can be found in a database , which is divided into 44 different categories, such as: B. Place of birth, occupation, migration route and concentration camp are structured. In addition, there is a summary for each interview, still images show photos of family members, acquaintances and friends as well as other relevant objects and documents.