Czech Republic: Survivor stories bring scholars and educators to Prague

Three years after Charles University’s Malach Center gained access to the Visual History Archive, its importance as a destination for testimony-based research, educational activities and discourse on the Holocaust continues to grow.

Celebrating its third anniversary in January 2013, the Malach Center hosted a conference that focused on Jewish refugees’ testimonies, mutual perspectives of Jews and Roma after 1939, and more, all within the context of testimony as primary source material. The Institute also participated in the conference; its Chief Technology Officer, Sam Gustman (pictured here with Charles University Rector Václav Hampl, at left), introduced the latest version of the Visual History Archive and its Google Maps-powered “Places Search” feature. The conference closed with a live musical performance by Michal Hrubý (clarinet), Jaroslav Svoboda (harmonium) and Petr Tichý (contrabass) of Karel Reiner's stage music for an ancient Czech folk play about Esther, a piece played in the Terezín ghetto.