The antecedents for the establishment of the archive was a meeting between Laurel Vlock, a television journalist at WTNH News 8 of Connecticut, and Dori Laub, a child Holocaust survivor and New Haven psychiatrist.
They partnered with William Rosenberg, the president of the local chapter of the Farband, a labor Zionist organization, which had many Holocaust survivors among its members.
In 1990, composer Steve Reich's piece, Different Trains, which incorporated soundbites from the Fortunoff testimonies, won a Grammy Award for best contemporary classical composition.
[5] The Fortunoff Archive pioneered the usage of video testimonies to record eyewitness accounts of major historical events.
The Archive has served as the primary inspiration for video testimony projects documenting the Cambodian genocide, ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia and other crimes against humanity.