Over 130,000 hours of Holocaust survivors' testimonies were transcribed

In an effort to preserve the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and make them accessible to future generations, the Verbit company is putting its abilities in the field of Verbal Intelligence to transcribe an ambitious goal of 8 million minutes with the testimonies of Holocaust survivors – over 130 thousand hours of recording. Part of the transcription work in the project will be financed by the Claims Conference, a global organization that works to ensure the well-being of Holocaust survivors, and which handles, among other things, the transfer of compensation from the German government to the survivors.

For many decades, many testimonies were collected from Holocaust survivors who agreed to share their stories, but a large part were recorded in poor quality, and today most of them are
The witnesses have already passed away – which makes the subject of memory and commemoration more important than ever. The project required Verbit to establish a community of transcribers in the Hebrew language, who are familiar with Yiddish concepts from the Holocaust era and master the names of geographical places in Europe.

Transcription helps preserve knowledge and make the data catalogable and searchable, and in addition – contributes to global accessibility, because it is easier to translate
Transcribed file for various languages. Verbit's platform performs the initial transcription using automatic speech recognition technology, and then a human layer is added that makes corrections and brings the file to a high level of transcription that can be used by the archives for their needs, as well as for building global study programs.

According to Verbit CEO Yair Amsterdam: "We saw a special challenge to transcribe old recordings of not high quality. For this purpose, we developed a new technology for cleaning background noise, which made it possible to renew decades-old recordings. The ambition is to transcribe about 8 million minutes of testimonies recorded in many languages, which will enable the commemoration of the Holocaust among the future generation as well. Such a project is accompanied by a sense of national mission and heritage of the people of Israel. It is of the utmost importance to document history in order to make such events accessible in Israel and in the world, to make sure that they will not happen again."

The testimonies, given in many languages, in different local dialects and with varied accents, were collected from eight archives in Israel as well as from Yale University. One of the transcribed testimonies is that of Gita Sikowitz, who was born 97 years ago in the Carpathian Mountains in Czechoslovakia. In her testimony she describes how she went through the holocaust as a girl and managed to survive the selections in Auschwitz and the labor camps, despite the shameful conditions of hunger and extreme cold. In her testimony, given in 2011, she described how her father, Rabbi Greenwald, who was the chief rabbi and head of the yeshiva in Khost, was forced to cut off his beard. She describes a Seder night that they "celebrated" and was full of tears, and how they were kicked out of schools and how their employment opportunities were taken away.

"Unfortunately, in the not too distant future we will have to tell the story of the Holocaust in a world without survivors," says Greg Schneider, Senior Vice President of the Claims Conference. "The testimonies of Holocaust survivors are extremely sensitive. Despite the technical challenges, such as poor quality audio, dialects and varied accents, the transcripts must be accurate, so the professional care given to them is of great importance."