“Experiences of Austrian Emigres and Survivors in the US - Austrian Heritage Collection”
Professional Background
Albert Lichtblau received his PhD in history and political science at the University of Vienna. He is a professor of modern and contemporary history and was vice chair and chair of the Center for Jewish Cultural History, as well as vice chair and chair of the Department of History at the University of Salzburg (Austria). His areas of scholarly expertise include qualitative methods, Jewish history, genocide, memory, migration studies, forms of representing history, oral history, and audiovisual history. Lichtblau understands history as “applied history” and takes on projects that are relevant to the public. One such initiative involved securing oral history interviews with Holocaust survivors that were stored in scholars’ private archives and as such had been inaccessible. He made it possible to copy them to be included in a professional audio archive and, over the years, this small project grew to a possibility to permanently archive interviews in the Austrian media library (Österreichische Mediathek, Vienna). The “Sammlung Lichtblau. Oral History Interviews mit Opfern des Nationalsozialismus” [Lichtblau Collection: Oral History Interviews with Victims of National Socialism] was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World - Register Memory of Austria in 2018. His recent work has focused on the new Austrian exhibition for the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, which Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen opened on October 4, 2021. As the scientific director of the exhibition, Lichtblau spoke at the opening. He is currently working on several exhibitions and on a project called "Places of Remembrance" about resistance in the districts of Salzburg.
Fellowship Research
Albert Lichtblau was awarded a William J. Lowenberg Memorial Fellow on America, the Holocaust, and the Jews for his research project “Experiences of Austrian Emigres and Survivors in the US - Austrian Heritage Collection.” His project aims for a deeper understanding of written and oral testimonies of those who survived National Socialism in Austria and now live or did live in the United States, using the Austrian Heritage Collection at the Leo Baeck Institute in New York as the main source. Lichtblau focuses on self-reported, written answers provided in a detailed questionnaire, which allow a wide range of generalization while maintaining individual uniqueness. More than 700 respondents were interviewed or submitted personal documents to this collection. Museum oral history and document collections complement and work together with the Austrian Heritage Collection, as there are numerous overlapping holdings with which to compare responses and testimony from a variety of sources.