Contemporary Witness Accounts

Lucille Eichengreen

With fewer and fewer survivors left to tell the grisly tale, remembrance of the Third Reich is gradually fading in Germany. Hence the enduring efforts to archive and digitize interviews with eyewitnesses of the era.

Much of the amassed material is now available for a University of Mainz research project. Anyone studying the Nazi period has to rely on eyewitness accounts. But there are fewer and fewer survivors around to tell the gruelling tale. That's why a project has been launched, Das Dritte Reich in der Erinnerung von Zeitzeugen ("The Third Reich Remembered"), to keep those memories alive for posterity. Headed by Prof. Sönke Neitzel from the history department at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, the research team has set out to process and evaluate some 1,800 documents.

Guido Knopp

With a €57,000 grant from the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the project uses source material put together by a non-profit association, Die Augen der Geschichte ("The Eyes of History") (est. 2001 in Mainz), whose object is to capture on film interviews concerning 20th-century German history for the benefit of posterity. The association, in turn, is an initiative of broadcaster ZDF's contemporary history staff under Guido Knopp. Seeing as only excerpts of the several thousand interviews in the ZDF archives can be aired, the network is sharing the material with the association for educational purposes. This copious footage was shot in the making of TV documentaries like Hitler – eine Bilanz, Hitlers Helfer and the weekly TV news magazine Hi-story.

Prof. Sönke Neitzel, history department at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, on Das Dritte Reich in der Erinnerung von Zeitzeugen ("The Third Reich Remembered").

Das Dritte Reich in der Erinnerung von Zeitzeugen: What is the project about?

We want to find out how eyewitnesses remember the Third Reich – 50 or 60 years after World War II. We're interested in three areas: how people remember individuals like Hitler, Göring and so on; events like Reichspogromnacht [i.e. the Kristallnacht pogroms on 9 Nov. 1938], the outbreak of the war or the battle for Stalingrad; and how they remember certain experiences, like the loss of family members, friends and so on.

In your project description you talk about a gap in the research. Where's the gap?

Remembering the Third Reich has been the subject of a great many studies. The main drawback of past studies, however, is the relative dearth of source material on which they're based. I find it problematic to draw conclusions about the memories of "the Germans" from a handful of surveys. No-one to date has had more than 140 interviews at their disposal for such a study.

How large is the overall stock of material and where does it come from?

Our research is based on roughly 1,800 interviews conducted from 1995 to 2005 by the contemporary history section of ZDF's editorial staff. Augen der Geschichte ["Eyes of History"], an association founded by Guido Knopp which holds the research rights to this unique source, has made the material available to us. And we're very grateful for this support, since we could never have put together so many interviews on our limited budget.

The first phase was concluded in December 2005. What's the current status of the project?

In the first four-month phase we entered and encoded all 1,800 interviews in a database we created. Only now can we grapple with the vast mass of data: some of the interview transcripts are over a hundred pages long. At the click of a mouse you can now select all the passages in which survivors talk about Nazi crimes.

How would you assess the benefits of digitizing the interviews?

I think the benefits are very substantial because it's the only way such copious interviews can be used by scholars and the general public.

What's special about the material?

For one thing, the sheer quantity: no-one before has had such a wealth of interviews to work with. For another thing, the heterogeneity of the material: it covers all walks of life, every age group and denomination, presenting an extraordinarily wide look at the Third Reich in retrospect.

Can scholars and the general public also access the data?

For the time being, the material is only available to our research team. But there are plans to make some of the source material available to the public on the Web after completion of the project, which is scheduled for the end of 2007. But we still have to find funding for the Website. Digitizing and entering into a database may sound simple, but it's an expensive undertaking.

What about use in schools?

Our plans to put at least some of the material in an Internet database should enable schools in particular to make use of this fascinating historical source in class. Again, it all depends on whether we manage to get funding.

Do you expect that other television and radio broadcasters will follow ZDF's example and let researchers use their documentary material?

That would certainly be desirable. Recently a number of my colleagues called for precisely that at a conference. Whether other broadcasters follow ZDF's example will certainly depend a great deal on the success of our project. I truly hope we can drive home the fact that the material the broadcasters have produced is a very significant historical source, to which researchers should have more access.