American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection at NYPL
With over 6,000 hours of taped interviews, the American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection is the most extensive oral history collection of the American Jewish experience in the 20th century. Over 300 transcripts are available to view online.
Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
Housed at Yale University, the Fortunoff Archive collection consists of over 4,400 testimonies of Holocaust survivors, witnesses and liberators. You need to obtain permission from the Fortunoff Archive in order to obtain access. (The database can be searched remotely, but access to the videos is available only at approved access sites, including the Center for Jewish History.)
Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive at USHMM
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive is one of the most expansive collections of holocaust testimony in the world. Thousands of these interviews are available online.
Jewish Counterculture History Project at UPenn
This project set out to document the havurah movement and other diverse forms of Jewish counterculture. The collection consists of 25 interviews, all of which are available online.
Jewish Oral History Project by the American West Center and held at the University of Utah
This project was conducted by the American West Center between 1972 and 1977 with Jewish Americans living in Utah.
Shanghai Jewish Oral History Collection at Bates College
The Shanghai Jewish Community Oral History Project was directed by Steve Hochstadt, former Professor of History at Bates College. The project collected oral histories of surviving Shanghai Jews, focusing especially on the German-speaking refugees. The collection consists of 99 audiotaped interviews with over 115 Shanghai Jews. Currently 64 of the interviews have been transcribed and transcription work continues.
The Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project is comprised of over 1,000 interviews. The interviews are conducted in Yiddish and/or English.
Best Practices / Oral History Association
This document presents the Oral History Association’s guidelines for how to conduct high-quality oral history interviews while highlighting standard practices that will produce historically valuable and ethically conducted interviews.
Oral History Interview, Questions and Topics / JewishGen
A list of example questions to use when interviewing family members.
Oral History Interview Guidelines / United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
This guide contains step-by-step suggestions for making initial contact with an interviewee, conducting research and preparing questions for the interview, and producing transcripts and summaries to help make the interview(s) accessible to researchers. This is available online and in print at the Ackman and Ziff Genealogy Institute here at the Center for Jewish History.
Web Guides to Doing Oral History / Oral History Association