The collection contains 590 life story interviews with former prisoners of concentration camps, prisoners of war and 'civilian' forced laborers.

590 surviving witnesses recount their memories of Nazi forced labor in 583 interviews (7 of which were pair interviews). 32 project teams conducted interviews in 26 countries, primarily in Central and Eastern Europe. Most of the interviews were recorded in Ukraine, Poland and Russia.

In addition to well-known survivors such as Jorge Semprún, survivors of other “forgotten” groups of victims, such as the Roma or those subjected to forced Germanization, tell their stories.

About a third of the interviewees were "slave laborers" in concentration camps.

Altogether 341 men and 249 women were interviewed. 134 witnesses are Jewish survivors, and 46 Sinti or Roma. The age range spans from 65 to 98 years of age.

The 190 video and 393 audio interviews were conducted in the native languages of the witnesses or their present adopted language. The detailed biographical interviews average three to four hours in length; most of them took place in the homes of the interviewees. Almost all of the interviews have been transcribed and made accessible by short biographies; approximately 170 video interviews have been translated into German.

In addition to the actual audio and video tapes, the collection contains transcripts, photos, documents and additional accompanying materials. Over 4800 scanned personal documents as well as historical and current photographs complement the recordings of altogether over 2000 hours of interviews. All of the photos on this website come from this archive material.

Advanced progress in the translating and indexing of the interviews is currently underway. Additionally, the search functions have been expanded considerably. As soon as the indexing process is complete, an exact search will be possible, i.e. it will be possible to target precisely those segments in which a specific topic is discussed. The interviews are also displayed with headings. An index allows for a focused search according to place of deployment or by company or person. With the version 2.0 release of the archive in June 2010, transcripts and translations have been added to the video and sound recordings.

• Interview Guidelines
• The Book Hitler's Slaves