Judith Monachina was a community journalist when she began interviewing people about the Italian Holocaust, in 2000. She was awarded a Fulbright research fellowship (journalism) to study in Milan, in 2007, at the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation. While doing research for the book, she began to study oral history practice and was a fellow at the Columbia University Oral History Summer Institute. In 2016, she became founding director of the Housatonic Heritage Oral History Center at Berkshire Community College.