Please join the Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon at our next meeting on June 5, 2016.  

It will be held at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education with guest speaker Anne LeVant Prahl.  The presentation will be on Conducting An Effective (And Fun) Oral History Interview.  This is a must attend event for anyone interested in the ongoing preservation of the life stories of our parents, grandparents and the Jewish people.

“Oral history refers both to a method of recording and preserving oral testimony and to the product of that process.” *

OJMCHE’s institutional mission is to interpret the Oregon Jewish experience, explore the lessons of the Holocaust and foster intercultural conversations.

*Oral History Association

Description:     The Oral History Project is a key part of the OJMCHE’s mission to preserve and present the history of Oregon’s Jewish community The central goal is to develop a community oral history archive that provides a chronicle of the experiences of the Jews of Oregon. The project began by documenting the lives of the former residents of South Portland in the 1970s. Efforts have also included the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and liberators of death camps. Several focused efforts are currently underway to collect multiple histories from within particular geographic or communal areas throughout the state.

Bio:     Anne LeVant Prahl, the Curator of Collections at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education, has been working in collections management since 1987. She began doing oral history by interviewing former members of Texas’ Black gospel quartets for the Texas Music Museum as part of her masters work in anthropology at the University of Texas. In Oregon, as part of her position of curator, she runs the oral history program for the museum, training interviewers, identifying interview subjects, and maintaining the collection of nearly 700 oral histories.