Conducting Research with Video Testimony

On June 6–7, 2019, the George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention hosted an international interdisciplinary conference, Comparative Lenses, on the scholarly uses of video testimonies of survivors and eyewitnesses of genocide and mass violence. The conference was organized in partnership with Yahad – In Unum; the USC Shoah Foundation’s Center for Advanced Genocide Research; and the AGBU Nubar Library. It took place in the Omid & Gisel Kordestani Rooftop Conference Center on the 8th floor of the Quai d’Orsay Learning Commons, the new flagship building of The American University of Paris (AUP).

The Comparative Lenses conference discussed the academic relevance of video testimonies of atrocity and sought to uncover new approaches to collecting and working with such testimonies in the field of genocide studies. The discussions emphasized three main areas of comparison: late-1970s video testimony versus modern-day recordings, survivor testimonies versus those of eyewitnesses (or, in some cases, perpetrators) and Holocaust testimonies versus those relating to other acts of genocide and mass violence.

An introductory session was given over to the presentation of several of the archives in which these testimonies are housed. The USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive (VHA) is the world’s largest collection of Holocaust survivor testimonies, containing over 54,000 recorded interviews. In addition to the Shoah, the archive contains testimonies of nine genocidal events, including the Tutsi, Guatemalan, Cambodian and Armenian genocides, the Nanjing massacre of 1937, anti-Rohingya mass violence, contemporary antisemitism, the South Sudan civil war and the Central African Republic conflict. The George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention is one of the first institutions in France to host the entire VHA collection. Another presentation covered the Yahad – in Unum archive, which documents what it terms the “Holocaust by bullets.” Between 1941 and 1944, following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, 1.5–2 million Jews were killed by mass shootings in Eastern Europe. Also presented were the Aegis Trust’s archive of testimonies from survivors of the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda, the different collections of Armenian genocide testimonies available around the world, and the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies from Yale University, now also available at AUP.

The two-day event included panels discussing the differences between survivor and eyewitness testimonies, and the contextual relationship that exists between time period, subject and place. Anika Walke (Washington University in St. Louis) discussed the idea of place in relation to the Yahad – in Unum archive. “Interviewees are not selected on the basis of identity,” she explained. “They are, in fact, interviewed as experts on a place.” The victims of the Holocaust by bullets were killed in their own villages – very few were deported – so testimonies relating to the atrocities are mostly from local witnesses. Their personal connections to the killing sites become intertwined with the narratives they use to describe mass violence.

“Best practice” approaches to gathering testimonies, including ethical considerations, were put forward by a number of speakers. Ari Joskowicz (Vanderbilt University) noted in his talk how mistrust in technology can place limitations on one’s ability to find interview subjects. Using the example of Romani survivors of the Holocaust by bullets, Joskowicz compared testimonies from the 1960s to those from the 1990s. “Sometimes we think about silences, but in other cases it was difficult not to speak,” he explained, referring to the push in the postwar period to gather legal evidence in order to prosecute Nazi perpetrators. Given the postwar political climate, there may well have been legitimate reasons why certain groups, including the Romani, were hesitant to work directly with the police, as doing so constituted a form of surveillance. Joskowicz noted that today’s technological problems are about privacy issues associated with big data. “The intentions of people who create the data are not considered by those who manage databases,” he warned, noting that technologies used to record testimonies are similar to those used by corporations to track people.

On day two, discussion turned to the relevance of using Holocaust testimonies as a paradigm when gathering evidence of other genocidal events. The VHA was used, for example, as a model when interviewing survivors of the Guatemalan genocide of the early 1980s. Estelle Tarica (University of California, Berkeley) discussed the Guatemala Forensic Anthropology Foundation – known by its Spanish acronym, FAFG. She argued that, while the VHA struggles against time when it comes to documenting survivor evidence, FAFG struggles against politics. She discussed concerns that the Holocaust model could be having “too much influence” on academic understanding of the region, but concluded that this was not the case in her research into the testimonies of Mayan victims of the genocide.

Other speakers included Teresa de Langis (American University of Phnom Penh), who spoke about the ethical considerations of working with survivors of sexual violence under the Khmer Rouge regime; Glenn Timmermans and Alex Chi Un Lam (University of Macau), whose presentation covered Chinese institutional memory of both the Nanjing and Tiananmen massacres; and Noah Shenker (Monash University), who spoke to the application of the Holocaust studies paradigm to the case of the Stolen Generations – a name given to the aboriginal children forcibly removed from their families under Australian government policy between 1910 and 1970. Shenker discussed the establishment of an aboriginal oral history archive, for which the VHA was used as a template, and the differences in methodology needed to ensure cultural sensitivity. Aboriginal avoidance practices discourage the use of videos or photographs of the dead, and even audio recordings require written permission; the 337 testimonies in the aboriginal oral archive are therefore audio only.

In the final presentation, the question of technology was readdressed, as discussion turned to issues of documenting mass violence in the modern day. Uğur Ümit Üngör (Utretcht University) spoke of the particularities of video testimony of the ongoing conflict in Syria – much of which is recorded by witnesses themselves. There are, to date, over 3 million videos related to the conflict. “Syria is a war of images,” explained Üngör. “The number of hours of video of the conflict is many times more than the actual length of the conflict.” He noted that the smartphone could be considered a weapon, given its triple use for communication, coordination of violence and publication of propaganda, though he also mentioned apps – like eyeWitness to Atrocities – that allow victims to upload video evidence of human rights abuses even while they are happening. Perpetrators, too, create hours of video content, often in the form of “trophy videos” or livestreamed violence designed to spread terror. He argues that video is changing the nature of violence in the modern era, though admitted that the specifics of how it was doing so required further research.

The interplay of place, time, subject and event influences the ways in which testimonies are recorded, distributed and used in academia. There is little doubt that video testimony provides a valuable resource for scholars of genocide studies to advance vital academic work, but evolving technology presents new challenges, and a deeper understanding of specific approaches to documenting individual atrocities has led to changing methodological practices. The Comparative Lenses conference capped off a successful Spring 2019 semester for the George and Irina Schaeffer Center for the Study of Genocide, Human Rights and Conflict Prevention, closing out a busy schedule of events. With the first speaker already announced for the start of the new academic year, the Center continues to go from strength to strength.