Podcast
Season 11 Stories of survival from Chisinau
Formerly known as Bessarabia, Moldova began the 20th century as part of the Russian Empire, was ceded to Romania in 1917 and was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940. The Romanians invaded a year later, the Soviets returned in 1944 and occupied the country until 1991. Listen to Season 11
Season 10 Vedem: the secret boys’ magazine of Terezin
They were 13 and 14-year-old boys imprisoned in the Terezin (Theresienstadt) Ghetto and only a handful would survive the Holocaust.
Every Friday night, they would take turns reading from their own secret magazine, Vedem (Czech for In The Lead) which was filled with poetry, essays, and humor.
Listen to Season 10
Season 9 Four stories of survival in Terezin
They were born between 1920 and 1928. They were enrolled in school or had just started jobs. Until the Germans occupied and dismembered Czechoslovakia in March, 1939. Soon the deportation notices arrived and their descent into hell began. Listen to Season 9
Season 8 Shtetl Stories from Romania.
In 2005, our interviewer Emoke Salzman traveled to what were then the last of Romania’s shtetls to interview 20 elderly Jews. In this season of Centropa Stories, we highlight three of their stories, and they are truly among the last...
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Season 7 Five eyewitnesses in hell. The Auschwitz stories.
Auschwitz-Birkenau. The ultimate symbol of the Holocaust, where more than a million Jews were murdered. Of the 1,230 elderly Jews we interviewed between 2000 and 2009, nearly 100 managed to survive this hell on Earth—some to be sent on to...
Listen to Season 7
Season 6 Escape from/hiding in Thessaloniki
Three of our Thessaloniki-born interviewees describe their lives before the war, how they survived by fleeing or hiding, and how they started over after the war. Listen to Season 6
Season 5 Anna Lanota: A Jewish partisan in Poland
She escaped the Warsaw Ghetto, and with a false ID, took to the forests and city streets to kill Germans. Read by Sara Kestelman in London, who has played in the Royal Shakespeare Company and in Star Wars.
Listen to Season 5
Season 4 The destruction of a Sephardic Jewish community
A walk through Belgrade's Jewish quarter, personal stories, historical lectures, readings from Serbian fiction, Sephardic music.
Listen to Season 4
Season 3 A Ukrainian Jewish Century
13 episodes that will take you on a journey through the 20th century.
With stories read by some of Britain’s finest character actors, you will hear excerpts from Sholem Aleichem, as well as personal stories of those who grew up in shtetls, fled from the...
Listen to Season 3
Season 2 9th November, 1938
In Season Two of CENTROPA STORIES, you will meet three of our interviewees whose parents took them to Vienna’s train stations and put them on Kindertransports to England, then went home to wait for the knock on the door they knew would come. Listen to Season 2