Victor W. Holocaust testimony

Identifier
HVT 1033
Language of Description
English
Level of Description
Collection
Source
EHRI Partner

Abstract

Videotape testimony of Victor W., who was born in New York and entered the United States Army in 1936. He recalls serving in Panama and Jamaica, then in Patton's army in Casablanca, Tunisia, and Sicily after Pearl Harbor; returning to the United States in summer 1944 for training under the Judge Advocate's office to assist with war crime trials; return to Europe in September; assignment to war crime investigations in Paris; transfer to Nuremberg; orders to accompany the unit liberating Flossenbu?rg; entering the camp when fighting had abated; shock at the prisoners' condition despite his training; the unbearable stench; learning most prisoners had been evacuated; rounding up guards; orders to follow the death march; smelling rotting corpses; finding recently dug shallow graves; compelling local residents, who claimed ignorance of the death march, to properly rebury the bodies; interrogating prisoners in Nuremberg, including Jochen Peiper; transfer to the defense team at the Dachau trials; encounters with Claus Schilling, who performed medical experiments on humans, and Martin Weiss, a Dachau Kommandant; orders to release a perpetrator of a massacre who was deemed necessary for postwar construction; and other perpetrators who were released due to postwar political considerations

Extent and Medium

2 videocassettes

Conditions Governing Access

This testimony is open with permission.

Conditions Governing Reproduction

Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive.

Rules and Conventions

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Process Info

  • compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

People

Corporate Bodies

Subjects

Genre

This description is derived directly from structured data provided to EHRI by a partner institution. This collection holding institution considers this description as an accurate reflection of the archival holdings to which it refers at the moment of data transfer.