A collection of over 60 Jewish community oral history interviews has been given to Auckland Public Libraries.
In 1994 a group interested in interviewing people in the Auckland Jewish community met to set up a formal group as a subcommittee of the Auckland Jewish Council.
At that time, the initial focus was to interview Holocaust survivors living in Auckland. However, concurrently, another group of interviews was underway, of people who were and are prominent in the community.
Early interviews were initiated by the late Shirley Ross in the 1980s and are ongoing. The Shirley Ross interviews, as well as a number of taped interviews, speeches and other material held by the Auckland Jewish community were brought together and grouped under the heading of “Community Identities”.
As with all the interviews held by the Auckland Jewish Oral History Group these have been digitized.
The collection is made up of interviews for the main part, but there are also folders of papers, speeches and documents or other material collected.
Included in the collection are interviews with such people as Percy Bookman, David Pezaro, David Ross, Dian Ross, Rena Ross, David Stern, David Levene, Olive Manning, Wendy Ross, Ada Cohen, Barbara Goodman, Arnold Treister to name a few.
Numbering approximately 60, copies of these interviews have now been given to the Auckland Public Libraries so that they will be publicly available.
This has been possible with a generous grant from a community member and the interviews have now been formatted so that the collection can be accessioned into the Libraries’ system.
The interviewers have been many but include the following:
Edwina Myers, Suzanne Szusterman, Judy Gluckman, Anthony Hart, Claire Bruell, Freda Narev, Ilse Stein, Shirley Ross and many others.
The Community Identity interviews will be named in the library catalogue and the interviews will be available by visiting the library, once accessioned by library staff. Each will be accompanied by a Consent form governing access, signed by the interviewee at the time of the interview.
We are confident that the collection will provide valuable material for the community and others going forward, when researching the history of the Auckland Jewish community.
Claire Bruell, Judy Gluckman
Coordinators Auckland Jewish Oral History Group
