Almost twenty-five years ago, the Tennessee Holocaust Commission began a powerful mission: to record and preserve the stories of Tennesseans connected to the Holocaust. Survivors, liberators, hidden children, and refugees shared their experiences on film during a time period that has come to be known as “The Era of the Witness.”

This project revisits ten of those remarkable interviews, featuring five survivors and five liberators, to explore how these Tennesseans remembered, told, and passed down their stories of survival and liberation. By examining the nuances in their testimonies, it considers how individual memories diverge, overlap, and evolve over time, and how personal experience shapes the way each witness understands the past. It also asks an important question: how did these local voices fit into the global story of Holocaust memory?

Content Note

This project includes firsthand testimonies from Holocaust survivors and military liberators. These oral histories contain descriptions of violence, loss, and traumatic experiences that some visitors may find distressing. They are presented here for educational and commemorative purposes, as part of the effort to preserve witness accounts of the Holocaust and its aftermath.

Visitors are encouraged to approach these materials with care and respect for the individuals who shared their stories. The interviews reflect personal memories, spoken decades after the events, and may include emotional language or difficult subject matter.