Laurel Fox Vlock: Pioneering Holocaust Filmmaker

Join us at the New Haven Museum on Sunday, March 3 at 2 PM for the Second Annual Judith Ann Schiff Women’s History Program! This year, we are celebrating the life, work, and legacy of Laurel Fox Vlock. The program will include video clips of Vlock’s interviews and remembrances of her life by colleagues and family members. An exhibit by JHSGNH on Vlock will be on view in the Community Case in the New Haven Museum’s rotunda throughout March 2024.

Laurel Fox Vlock is best known for creating the collection that became the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University. Born and raised in New Haven, Vlock began her journalism career in 1964 with a WYBC-FM radio program taped in and broadcast to New Haven public school students, “Your Community Speaks.” She interviewed local, national, and international personalities on Dialogue with Laurel Vlock on WTNH-TV and National Jewish Television’s Jewish Spectrum. While focusing largely on New Haven and Jewish communities, Vlock interviewed many leaders and scholars, including Golda Meir, Elie Wiesel, and Hillary Clinton. 

This annual lecture series is dedicated to the memory of Judith Ann Schiff, a co-founder of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater New Haven and the Ethnic Heritage Center. She spent her entire career as an archivist at Yale and historian dedicated to women’s, ethnic, and New Haven history.