Multi-Generational Memory in Indiana: Oral History and the Use of Descendant Testimony in Holocaust Education

Abstract

The year 2025 marks the eightieth anniversary of the end of the Holocaust. In the genocide’s aftermath, the state of Indiana became home to Holocaust survivors and – with time – their descendants. Indiana offered survivors a place to rebuild their lives. Unfortunately, our collective understanding of Indiana’s survivor population, their Holocaust experience, and lives in Indiana, has yet to be studied. The most significant challenge preventing that understanding is the lack of collection and accessibility to primary sources from survivors in Indiana public history institutions, namely oral histories. We must now – as a fast-approaching post-witness era arrives – investigate new opportunities to document the history of the Holocaust and its impact on Hoosiers. In this paper, I argue descendants of survivors can bridge the memory of the Holocaust to how Indiana can memorialize the Holocaust. The project, and this paper, centers around five second and third generation descendants and their recorded testimonies. By utilizing oral histories as a mechanism for documentation and storytelling, their testimonies offer an opportunity to strengthen Indiana’s historical record and Holocaust education. This paper identifies the process of conducting an oral history project including the scholarship which informs it and logistical preparation to record and preserve five oral histories. In the analysis of the project’s testimonies, themes of multi-generational trauma, memorialization of survivor ancestors, and identities of descendants illuminate the significant contributions of this project not only to Indiana’s memory, but rightfully adding to the growing studies on descendants in Holocaust studies and education across the United States. This paper provides a concise survey of the state of Holocaust education in Indiana and public history institutions who contribute to it. By identifying the contributions, the limitations of Holocaust education in Indiana – notably inaccessible collections of survivor testimony – prevent Hoosiers to participate in meaningful education and memorialization of Indiana’s survivor population. The project offers a foundation by filling a gap in Indiana’s historical record about the Holocaust and providing accessible, ready-to-use oral histories Indiana’s historians, educators, and the public can integrate in local efforts to teach, learn, and memorialize the Holocaust and Indiana’s survivors.