Refugee Voices

It is a collection of 150 filmed interviews with former refugees from Nazism who rebuilt their lives in Britain after the Second World War. The project consists of more than 450 hours of film and will form a very valuable resource for academics, researchers and others with a professional interest in the fields of Holocaust, immigration, refugee and asylum studies.

The project has been designed precisely with the requirements of scholars and researchers in mind. All the interviews have been fully transcribed and time coded to enable a researcher to pinpoint the precise part of the testimony they wish to access. Each interview is accompanied by still shots of photos of family members and friends, places of importance for the interviewee and of other items or documents of special significance in the interviewee’s life. As well as featuring episodes about their escape and survival, the interviewees also talk about how they reconstructed their lives and the contribution they made to Britain.

The project is framed by a database, a searchable catalogue containing 44 separate categories of information ranging from personal details to places of residence and occupation as well as information on peoples’ post war lives. Together with a summary sheet and key words section, the catalogue helps a user identify specific aspects of the interviews.