Beginning in the late 1970s, Holocaust archives began videotaping the oral testimony of Holocaust survivors. Housed in these archives are uniquely authored accounts of traumatic memory: thousands of hours of unconstrained recall from individuals who lived through extended atrocity. These archives then document the recall of personal experiences in the context of larger historical events.
As a psychologist, Dr. Kraft studies oral testimony of Holocaust survivors to understand memory for atrocity and its aftermath and to characterize the persistent influence of such memory on the lives of the survivors. Unlike the topographic summaries of trauma in large correlational studies or the distant approximations in the laboratory, qualitative study of Holocaust testimony discloses what resides within each person: the phenomenology of the tormented.
One goal of this research is to generalize the findings on the psychology of Holocaust survivors to other groups of people, including the survivors of widespread atrocities in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, and Guatemala. Drawing on close observation of more than 130 Holocaust testimonies at the Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University, this presentation outlines how atrocity is remembered, how it shapes the lives of the survivors, and how it is communicated to others.Dr. Kraft's talk is part of our year-long theme tacking "Sustainable Memory." The Education for Justice Office promotes justice throughout the University community through various programs, lectures and activities. The office intends to educate students on the importance of justice, so they may act ethically when faced with justice themes in the future. For additional information, visit our website.
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