- Description
- The Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation (Centropa) Collection was created by Centropa for the purpose of documenting Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe before, during, and after the Holocaust. The Centropa Collection is a completely digital collection that consists of Centropa’s administrative files, oral histories conducted by Centropa personnel, biographical information for each interviewee, and photographs relating to the interviewee and their family.
The administrative files include signed contracts that detail the user agreement between Centropa and the interviewee. Also included are Interviewer Workbooks created by Centropa to serve as a guide for conducting oral history interviews and associated documentation for their project initiative “Witness to a Jewish Century.”
The oral histories were conducted by Centropa personnel and capture the entire life of the interviewee, not just their Holocaust experiences. Therefore, the interviews may cover pre-war and post-war experiences of the individual. The original interviews were conducted by Centropa personnel using a tape recorder and later converted to digital audio files. In some cases, Centropa chose to digitally enhance the audio to improve the quality and clarity of the sound. USHMM has both the digitally converted audio and the enhanced audio of these interviews. In some cases, transcripts and translations of the interviews were created by Centropa. However, there are inconsistencies within the transcripts and translations of these interviews as some of them do not include the interviewer’s questions. The accuracy and completeness of the translations and transcriptions have not been verified by USHMM staff.
Biographical information files include biographies of the interviewee, family trees, and entries from the Centropa photographic database. Biographies and family trees are written by Centropa personnel. The photographic database entries consist of annotated digital images that highlight the lives and experiences of the interviewee, their relatives, and friends before, during, and after the Holocaust. The entries are written in the first person from the perspective of the interviewee by Centropa personnel. Information found within the record may include the name of an individual; placement of the individual within the photograph; the geographic location depicted within the photograph; name of the photographer or photo studio; year the photograph was taken; and a first person description of the photograph and/or biographical information about the person depicted within the photograph. The photographic database, created and administered by Centropa, was originally constructed as a FilemakerPro database. Prior to its transfer to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the database was deconstructed and the entries within the photographic database were placed within the individual interviewee files.
All photographs are associated with an individual interviewee and may include images of themselves, their family and/or friends. The photographs are largely personal in nature and capture a time before, during, and after the Holocaust. Some of the photographs may have entries in the Centropa photograph database which contains additional information about the photographs. All photographs within the Centropa collection were digitally copied by the Centropa staff from the interviewee’s personal collection at or around the time of the interview. The original photographs remained within the possession of the interviewee. Therefore, the collection does not include the original photographic prints, only digital surrogates of the originals.
- Date
-
inclusive:
2000-2019
bulk:
2001-2008
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collection
- Collection Creator
- Centropa
- Biography
-
The Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation (Centropa) was founded in 2000 by Edward Serotta, an American journalist, in Vienna, Austria and Budapest, Hungary for the purpose of documenting Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe before, during, and after the Holocaust. Between 2000 and 2009, Centropa personnel conducted over 1,230 oral history interviews throughout Central and Eastern Europe recording Jewish interviewees' memories and experiences for their main collecting initiative, “Witness to a Jewish Century.” The interviews were recorded on cassette tapes and were later converted to digital audio files by Centropa. Centropa also digitized family photographs and personal documents of nearly all of their interviewees. All photographs and documents remained within the possession of the interviewee following the interview and digitization of their personal photographs and documents.
Centropa launched their main website in 2002. In 2005, Centropa launched several programming initiatives that showcased their collection including thematic webpages, films, traveling exhibitions, educational programs, publications, walking tours, and podcasts. In 2022, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum acquired the Centropa Collection which includes the oral history interviews, digitized photographs and documents, administrative files and biographical information created by Centropa personnel for the project “Witness to a Jewish Century.”
