Forced Labor 1939 - 1945

Go to: content

Service Navigation

• Collection
• Forced Labor
• Project
• Press
• Education
• Links

• Development
• Aims of the Project
• Supporting Organizations
• Committees
• Programs and Activities

 

Aims and Making of the Project

The main steps involved are archiving, digitizing, structuring of an online platform, translating, content-based indexing, as well as preparing the archive for historical-political educational purposes. A short introductory film (German) provides information about the interview collection as well as the activities and objectives of the project.

The cooperational project was started in autumn of 2007. The interview recordings were digitalized and improved for quality. The archive has been available as a first online version for experts since January 2009. In June 2010, a new release of the archive was made available with improved functionality. Educational materials based on the interviews were developed.

Overview of the Individual Project Components

• Archiving and Inventorying
• Digitizing
• Making the Archive Available on a Web-Based Archive Platform
• Translating and Indexing
• Historical-Political Education

Digitizing the audio interviews

Digitizing the video interviews

Archiving and Inventorying

The German Historical Museum is responsible for providing the professional inventorying and the permanent storage of the some 2000 audio and video recordings and their accompanying materials. This is ensured by the optimal conservation and safeguarding techniques provided by the cinematheque of the German Historical Museum.

Digitizing

The Center for Digital Systems (CeDiS) at the Freie Universität Berlin digitized the some 2000 video and audio recordings. The recordings were digitized with the Digas System of the company David Systems; they were also improved for their quality but without changes in content. The file formats Broadcast WAVE (for the 393 audio interviews) and DV (for the 190 video interviews) are practical and versatile intermediate formats. For the use on an online platform, the files were converted to an internet-capable format (audio: MP3, video: MPEG4 Codec H264 and FLV onVP6).

Making the Archive Available on a Web-Based Archive Platform

The Center for Digital Systems (CeDiS) is developing an interactive web-based Archive Platform. Upon registration, the following materials are available:

• Interviews (audio / video)
• Transcripts
• Translations (when available)
• Photographs and documents
• Short biographies
• Further information 

Various search options (persons, metadata and full-text) allow directed access to the interviews complemented by additional materials. Students, researchers, but also pupils can search the interviews according to subset of the collection, group, place or specific experiences and watch or listen to the search results online. In the future, directed thematic access to individual parts of the interviews is available. In the future, functions for cooperative work (Web 2.0) will be made available as well.

Translating and Indexing

The Department for the History of Eastern Central Europe at the Institute for Eastern European Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin is coordinating the translation and indexing of the interviews. The interviews in 25 languages shall be completely translated into German for easy use for educational and research purposes. Content-based indexing enables research according to various search criteria that also lead directly and accurately to individual interview passages

Historical-Political Education

Some interviews from the online archive have been prepared for historical-political education. Teaching materials were created based on biographical short films: “Life Story Interviews in the Classroom: Video – DVD – Learning Software – Teachers’ Book” facilitate the use of the interviews in the history classroom, during class project days or exam presentations.

Selected interviews have been integrated into a PC Station of the Permanent Collection of the German Historical Museum located at the Zeughaus Berlin.