Online library showcases Jewish history

It now just takes a click to listen to words from a Holocaust survivor or Pittsburgh’s first… It now just takes a click to listen to words from a Holocaust survivor or Pittsburgh’s first Jewish chief of police.

A new online library, launched last week, allows Pitt students and members of the public to listen to audio from more than 500 interviews with Jewish people from the Pittsburgh area and throughout the United States.

The online library, sponsored by the Pittsburgh Section of the National Council of Jewish Women and Pitt’s Archives Service Center, showcases the stories of people who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. The interviews cover a wide range of topics, including carpentry, community service, the Holocaust and Hillman Library.

“There’s a very extensive guide to this project,” Rush Miller, Hillman librarian and director of the University Library System, said. “You can search by keywords, or if you’re interested in politics you can go in and search by those topics.”

“You can actually go straight into the material that you’re interested in,” he said.

Notable interviewees include former actor and Pitt graduate Richard Rauh, Holocaust survivor Steven Fenves and Pittsburgh’s first Jewish chief of police Mayer DeRoy.

Award-winning artist Milton G. Weiss spoke about his Hungarian background and his parents’ immigration to Western Pennsylvania. Weiss discussed not only his professional career but also his pertinent religious perspective.

“Because of the Depression, President Roosevelt had created the WPA — Works Progress Administration — and that organization was for the benefit [of] the masses of the American public who were mostly unemployed, but it also encouraged the arts. [It] included employment of artists, painters, musicians and writers. It did wonderful things for arts in America,” Weiss said in his interview, posted online.

The project began as a local initiative and then expanded to include people from other parts of Western Pennsylvania. A few interviewees are from other states.

Trained volunteers began interviewing members of the local Jewish community in 1968 to highlight the histories and memories of Pittsburgh residents who directly influenced the community. The project claims on its website to be one of the largest collections of its kind in the world.

The information, which is available for free online at http://digital.library.pitt.edu/n/ncjw, might help some students with their coursework

Pitt student Doug Adams is taking a Holocaust class and said that “the first hand accounts will be very useful for insight into their lives.”

Pitt student Greg Smith said, “For general purposes, this Jewish history database is definitely worthwhile.”

“I think it’d definitely help me as a religious studies major as well. It sounds incredibly interesting to see how the Jewish community not necessarily shaped Pittsburgh but influenced its growth, and this shows struggles they went through,” he said.