THE PROJECT

As early as August 1944 local Jewish committees, hastily formed in newly liberated Polish territory, began to record the personal accounts of survivors. Acting on behalf of the Jewish Historical Commission (JHI), these committees interviewed fellow Jews as they trickled in from death camps and hiding places. The resulting testimonies, about 7,300 in total, now reside in the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland (JHI). They constitute the largest compilation of survivors' stories in existence, surpassing even the thousands of accounts taken prior to the Nuremberg Tribunals.

Most of them just a few pages long and many of them handwritten, these testimonies reflect possibly the first large-scale attempt to gather information on Jewish suffering during the war. But decades of communist rule and linguistic barriers have prevented the testimonies from becoming available beyond the confines of their Polish archives.

The effort to bring them to international attention was initiated and perseveringly sustained by the late Mark Swiatlo, who at the time of his passing in May 2003 was the curator of the Judaica Library Collections of Florida Atlantic University (FAU). On a visit to Warsaw in 1997, Mr. Swiatlo met with his friend Dr. Felix Tych, the JHI Director, and was shown the collection. He was immediately struck by its sheer magnitude and by the raw immediacy of the accounts.

"I just couldn't walk away," Mr. Swiatlo would later recall. "I felt a strong moral obligation to help get these stories into print."

From that fortuitous meeting was born "Voices from the Ashes: The Forgotten Testimonies", a project whose goal is to translate and publish the entire collection. In the intervening years, an anthology of seventy testimonies was translated under the joint auspices of FAU and the JHI, and is now scheduled for publication.

"That got us off to a wonderful start," Mr. Swiatlo said. "Now we are appealing to Jews and non-Jews all over to help these voices rise from the ashes of history and speak their truth to future generations."

Mark Swiatlo is no longer here, but the strength of his determination is now embodied in the project he started. Following his death, the Voices from the Ashes Foundation was established to ensure that this project is brought to fruition.

Arrangements are now underway to translate 500 of the early testimonies over a period of two years commencing in January 2004. The task, to be performed in Poland under JHI supervision, is delicate and laborious. Each testimony must first be transcribed by skilled archivists and then carefully translated to reflect the nuance and style of the original. After all, whether recorded by an interviewer or handwritten by the author, every one of these accounts speaks with an individual voice.

The Voices from the Ashes Foundation is actively soliciting funds from both institutions and individuals to help defray the cost of this undertaking. If you wish to contribute, please click on How You Can Help. Contributions will be acknowledged upon publication of the testimonies and may be made as a memorial to a survivor or a loved one.

"These testimonies describe experiences that have just taken place. Some authors died soon after writing their stories. Their last act was to try to tell the world what had happened to them, and people of good will everywhere must help make their voices heard." - Mark Swiatlo