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"Frag nach, Just ask!" Digital interactive interviews with Inge Auerbacher and Kurt S. Maier

Digital interactive interviews with contemporary witnesses

Digital interactive interviews with contemporary witnessesFor more than 70 years, survivors of the Shoah have been sharing their experiences with people from around the world, and in doing so providing important insights that shape our understanding of history. Yet what will happen when there are no more eyewitnesses who can tell us of the Shoah and of exile? How will this affect the way we remember? The German Exile Archive 1933–1945 at the German National Library has been working with the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education to develop two interactive testimonies designed to preserve important interview material for posterity.

The project “Learning from the Past for the Present – Interactive interviews with Eyewitnesses of the Historical Exile”

The interactive interviews are part of the project “Learning from the Past for the Present – Interactive interviews with Eyewitnesses of the Historical Exile”. As part of the project, eyewitnesses Inge Auerbacher and Kurt S. Maier were asked a variety of questions which addressed topics such as their experiences of anti-Semitic persecution and exile after 1933.

The interactive eyewitness account is also a part of the USC Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in TestimonySM programme and was developed to ensure that the stories of eyewitnesses of the Shoah reach future generations. Using specially recorded interviews, Dimensions in TestimonySM makes it possible to engage in a question-and-answer-based interaction with eyewitnesses. This interactivity is a central feature of the experience provided by Dimensions in TestimonySM, as the eyewitnesses’ statements are only activated when a question is posed. Dimensions in TestimonySM is the first project of its kind in the world.

The digital testimonies by Kurt S. Maier and Inge Auerbacher have featured in the exhibition "Frag nach! Just Ask! Digital interactive interviews with Inge Auerbacher and Kurt S. Maier" in the exhibition area of the German Exile Archive 1933–1945 in Frankfurt am Main since September 2023.

To the exhibition

During the second phase, which will last until the end of 2024, the project will strenghten its connections with the existing permanent exhibition "Exile. Experience and Testimony”. The interaction between the two exhibitions and the accompanying educational programme allow visitors to find out more about National Socialism, exile, and topics such as racism, anti-Semitism and the loss of democratic values. They are encouraged to reflect, discuss and take a stance on these issues and enabled to understand them as a tangible, historic yet also contemporary threat.

Producing the digital interactive testimonies

In order to record the interviews, a team from the Exile Archive travelled to the present-day homes of Kurt S. Maier and Inge Auerbacher. The recordings were made there in specially equipped studios.
The interview for Kurt S. Maier's interactive testimony took place in Washington D.C. in July 2021, while the interview with Inge Auerbacher was recorded in a studio in New York in October 2022. The interviews were conducted by Dr. Sylvia Asmus, Head of the Exile Archive, who asked Kurt S. Maier and Inge Auerbacher more than 900 questions about their life stories, experiences during the Shoah and points of view. Each interview lasted five days.

Group of people ask questions of the interactive eyewitness account Photo: DNB, Josephine Ellermeyer

Between April and October 2022, Kurt S. Maier's interactive testimony underwent beta testing at the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig. This post-production phase was the first opportunity for groups to ask questions of the interactive eyewitness account, thus training the system which will be facilitating dialogue with the testimony in the future. More than 80 reference groups took part in the beta tests and helped improve the system by asking questions. The beta test phase for the interactive interview with Inge Auerbacher will continue until early in 2024.

The Exile Archive will also be taking the interactive testimonies on a tour through various regions of Germany.
Our aim is to make this innovative project better known, also outside Frankfurt am Main.
You can find out more in our blog.

Kurt Maier, contemporary witness

Kurt S. Maier was born in 1930 in Kippenheim. When he was 11, the family Maier was able to flee to the USA. Part of his life story is not only the experience of exile but also the forced deportation of the jewish community of Baden to the French camp Gurs in the Autumn of 1940. His partial premature literary estate is preserved in the German Exile Archive 1933-1945 at the German National Library.

Kurt S. Maier sitting on a park bench Photo: DNB, Theresia Biehl

More on Kurt S. Maier

Biography

Kurt S. Maier 1942 in New York Photo: private

  • 4 May 1930: Born in Kippenheim (Baden)
  • From 1936: Attends elementary school in Kippenheim, from 1938 onwards the first Jewish school in Freiburg i. Br.
  • From August 1938: The Maiers prepare to emigrate to the USA
  • 22 October 1940: Deportation of the Maiers to the camp at Gurs in Southern France
  • Spring 1941: Release from the Gurs camp, as the Maiers’ visa documents for the USA have been issued
  • 8 May 1941: The Maiers are given their visa documents at the American consulate in Marseilles; they depart shortly thereafter to Casablanca by ship
  • 7 June 1941: The family is interned for several weeks at the Sidi el-Ajachi camp, approx. 80 km south-west of Casablanca
  • 26 July 1941: Departure from Casablanca to New York on board the S.S. Nyassa
  • 9 August 1941: Arrival in New York
  • From Autumn 1941: Attends a public school, then a high school in New York Various jobs to supplement the family income, followed by employment with the US postal service t
  • 1947: Receives American citizenship
  • 1952-1954: Serves in the US Army
  • 1957-1961: Studies German Literature and History in New York, then at the FU Berlin from 1963-1964
  • 1967: Marries Margery Teal
  • 1969 Awarded his doctorate
  • Early 1970s: Teaches German Language and Literature at various colleges
  • 1975-1978: Librarian at the Leo Baeck Institute, New York
  • Since 1978: Librarian in the German History and Literature department at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
  • 1989: Kurt Maier speaks about his experiences in Nazi Germany at a German school for the first time as a eyewitness
  • 2010: Kurt S. Maier receives the Order of Merit from the state of Baden-Württemberg for his work as a eyewitness
  • 2011: Publication of his autobiography “Unerwünscht. Kindheits- und Jugenderinnerungen eines jüdischen Kippenheimers” (“Unwelcome. A Jewish Kippenheim native’s memories of childhood and adolescence”, 2nd edition 2018)
  • 2019: Kurt Maier receives the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his work as a eyewitness
  • July 2021: Kurt S. Maier is interviewed in Washington, D.C. for Dimensions in Testimony

Ingrid Auerbach, contemporary witness

Inge Auerbacher was born on 31 December 1934 in Kippenheim (Baden). On 22 August 1942, Inge and her parents were deported to Theresienstadt, where they were imprisoned until the camp was liberated by the Red Army on 8 May 1945. After a brief stay at a camp in Stuttgart, the Auerbacher family initially returned to their home in Baden, but found that they no longer felt at home in German post-war society. The family emigrated to the USA in May 1946.

Inge Auerbacher in the studio while the interview was being recorded. Photo: USC Shoah Foundation

More on Inge Auerbacher

Biografie

Inge Auerbacher c. 1940 Photo: private

  • 31 December 1934: born in Kippenheim (Baden) to Berthold and Regina Auerbacher
  • 1938: on the night of the November pogrom, Inge’s father and grandfather are deported to Dachau, where they are imprisoned for several weeks.
  • In 1939, the family are forced to sell their house in Kippenheim; they move to Jebenhausen to live with Inge’s grandparents, Betty and Max Lauchheimer
  • From 1940, Inge attends the Jewish school in Stuttgart
  • 1 December 1941: Inge’s grandmother is deported to Riga, where she is murdered
  • 1941: shortly after the grandmother’s deportation, the family has to leave Inge’s grandparents’ house and move to quarters in a so-called Judenhaus (“Jew’s house”)
  • On 22 August 1942, Inge and her parents are deported to Theresienstadt. They are imprisoned there until the camp is liberated by the Red Army on 8 May 1945.
  • After a brief stay at a camp in Stuttgart, the Auerbacher family return to Jebenhausen. Shortly afterwards, they move to Göppingen, where they live until May 1946.
  • 1946: the family emigrates to the USA
  • Shortly after her arrival in New York, Inge Auerbacher falls ill with tuberculosis, a legacy of her incarceration in Theresienstadt.
  • From 1948: discharge from hospital; education initially at home, then locally; interrupted by health setbacks
  • 1950: completion of junior high school, graduation in 1953, Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1958. Inge Auerbacher works as a chemist from then on.
  • Inge Auerbacher is granted U.S. citizenship in 1953.
  • 1966: first return visit to her former home in Kippenheim
  • In 1986, she publishes her childhood memoirs under the title “I am a Star”; a German translation is published in 1990. Other publications follow, including “Beyond the Yellow Star” in 2005
  • Inge Auerbacher is still active as a contemporary witness today and pays special attention to young people when telling her life story.
  • Inge Auerbacher has received several awards in Germany and the USA for her work as a contemporary witness and a promoter of German-Jewish understanding; these include the German Federal Cross of Merit.
  • On Holocaust Remembrance Day on 27 January 2022, she was speaking in the German Bundestag. In her speech, she appealed to the people of Germany to oppose anti-Semitism.
  • October 2022: Inge Auerbacher is interviewed in New York, D.C. for Dimensions in Testimony

Cooperative partner

Logo of the USC Shoah Foundation's programme "Dimensions in Testimony"

USC Shoah Foundation’s Dimensions in Testimony enables people to ask questions that prompt real-time responses from pre-recorded video interviews with Holocaust survivors and other witnesses to genocide. The pioneering project integrates advanced filming techniques, specialized display technologies and next generation natural language processing to create an interactive biography. Now and far into the future, museum-goers, students and others can have conversational interactions with these eyewitnesses to history to learn from those who were there.
Dimensions in Testimony was developed in association with Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, with technology by USC Institute for Creative Technologies, and concept by Conscience Display. Funding for Dimensions in Testimony was provided in part by Pears Foundation, Louis. F. Smith, Melinda Goldrich and Andrea Cayton/Goldrich Family Foundation in honor of Jona Goldrich, Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, and Genesis Philanthropy Group (R.A.). Other partners include CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center and the German Exile Archive 1933-1945 of the German National Library.

Sponsored by:

Logos of the Federal Commissioner for Culture and Media and of the Hessian programme "Hesse active for democracy and against extremism"

Information and contact

exilarchiv@dnb.de or +49 69 1525 1987

Last changes: 04.04.2024

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