Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 1,981 to 2,000 of 4,487
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Marc S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Marc S., who was born in ?an?cut, a small town in Poland in 1914 and grew up in ?o?dz?. He notes his Jewish education, beginning with cheder at the age of three. He tells of his flight after the German occupation to Russian-occupied Bia?ystok and of his return, with the help of non-Jews, to ?o?dz? to rejoin his mother, sister, and brother. He describes the ?o?dz? ghetto, particularly its Jewish administration, for which he worked until his deportation to Auschwitz in August 1944. Mr. S. was the representative of the revisionist Zionist organization on the Jewish Counc...

  2. Eugene R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eugene R., who was born in Abau?jsza?nto?, Hungary in 1922. He recalls the second class status of Jews despite a comfortable life; attending Yeshiva in Miskolc and gymnasium in Budapest while learning the leather trade; his brothers' compulsory service in labor battalions (they did not survive); German invasion; and forced labor outside Budapest in 1944. Mr. R. recounts chaos following Hungary's attempt to withdraw from the war; efforts by a battalion officer to prevent their deportation in late 1944; transport to Ferto?rakos; digging trenches and bunkers; horrendous ...

  3. Rose B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rose B., who was born in Da?ma?cus?eni, Romania in 1928, one of seven children. She recounts her family's affluence and their orthodoxy; Hungarian occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions, including her expulsion from school; deportation to the Dej ghetto, then Auschwitz in 1944; separation from her family (they were killed except for one brother); hospitalization; a nurse helping her; slave labor in the kitchen; encountering her brother; transfer to Kaufering in September; disposing of dead bodies during an epidemic; transfer to Dachau; liberation by United States troops...

  4. Toby Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Toby Z., who was born in Ulano?w, Poland in 1918. She recounts her mother's death; her father's remarriage; a good relationship with her stepmother; the births of five siblings; moving to Tarno?w; increasing antisemitism; German invasion in September 1939; ghettoization; forced labor outside the ghetto as a seamstress; smuggling food; deportation of her family except her older brother; her deportation to P?aszo?w; public hangings of food smugglers; transfer to Skarz?ysko-Kamienna; slave labor with a poisonous chemical in a munitions factor; assistance from other priso...

  5. Joseph K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph K., who was born in W?oc?awek, Poland in 1922. He recalls German occupation in 1939; ghettoization; extreme overcrowding and hunger; community efforts to feed the children and maintain their dignity; public hanging of a man who tried to bring food into the ghetto; and burning of the synagogue while Poles desecrated the Torah. Mr. K. recounts forced labor in Kolmar and Usch; deportation to Birkenau in 1941 where he stayed briefly; transfer to Jawarzno; slave labor building an electric plant and in coal mines; a failed escape by twenty-six prisoners; their exhort...

  6. Ellen S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ellen S., a non-Jew who was born in Bohemia. Mrs. S. describes her life in Plzen?; her limited yet positive contact with Jews; the German occupation and increasing restrictions on her freedom; her apprenticeship to a dressmaker; and her peripheral knowledge of the Jewish situation. She relates the shock of seeing a deportation train full of abused prisoners, and her thwarted attempts to feed them; her subsequent attempts to aid people when possible; and the inability of the church to address the immediate situation. She also speaks of meeting the American G.I. who was...

  7. Esther H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Esther H., who was born in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1927. She recounts her parents were Polish immigrants; seeing Hitler twice; anti-Jewish restrictions; visiting her grandparents in Poland in 1934; visiting an aunt in Berlin; her father being beaten and their home and store plundered on Kristallnacht; traveling to Antwerp via Aachen to live with a maternal aunt; her parents joining her; German invasion in May 1940; fleeing to Paris via Lille; assistance from the Joint; moving to Toulouse, then Saint-Loup; French soldiers being billeted in the house where they were st...

  8. Paula B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paula B., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1925. She recalls her much older brother and sister; a pleasant childhood; Soviet occupation; learning Russian folksongs; German invasion; ghettoization; food shortages; forced labor; participating in a chorus which gave her strength; her brother not returning from work (they never saw him again); her brother-in-law being taken in a round-up; her sister leaving with her child; public hanging of a friend; separation from her parents in a selection; deportation to Kaiserwald; slave labor with a friend (they remain in touch to t...

  9. Elly M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Elly M., who was born in the Hague, Netherlands in 1931. She recalls a happy childhood; no differences between Jews and non-Jews; German bombing of Rotterdam; anti-Jewish measures; her father's volunteering to go to Westerbork believing it would save his family (he never returned); and the underground separately hiding her and her sister. Mrs. M. remembers many transfers; settling with a family in Middelburg; a year and a half as a loved family member; one incident of separation due to danger of exposure; the November 1944 Allied liberation; attending school; liberati...

  10. Henri S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henri S., who was born in Aurich, Germany, the younger of two children. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; moving to Norden around 1935; attending a Jewish school; anti-Jewish restrictions; his father's deportation to Buchenwald and his grandfather's arrest on Kristallnacht; their release; smuggling themselves to Brussels via Aachen; German invasion in 1940; hiding with non-Jews during round-ups; his parents contacting the underground to hide him and his sister; placement with a farmer in Grendel; hearing from his sister through a priest (he did not know where she was...

  11. Louis C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Louis C., who was born in Berlin in 1925. He recounts his father's service in World War I; living in Nice while his father was a German government attorney; returning to Berlin in 1931; loss of family servants due to the Nuremberg laws; sham improvements during the 1936 Olympics; his bar mitzvah in 1938; Kristallnacht; non-Jewish neighbors hiding his father; expulsion from school; attending an ad hoc Jewish school; his parents putting him, his sister, and cousin on a train; arrival in Oldenzaal; living in a refugee camp, an orphanage, then another camp; joining his pa...

  12. Dora and Salo R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Dora R., who was born in a suburb of Czernowitz, Romania, in 1926, and her husband Salo R., who was born in Czernowitz in 1919. Mr. and Mrs. R. did not meet until after the war. They both describe the rich cultural life of prewar Czernowitz; the large (60,000) Jewish population; the German and Russian occupations and the German re-occupation; the implementation of anti-Semitic action; and the mass murder at the Kulturpalast. Mr. R. recalls hiding in a gentile household at the onset of the German occupation; the ghettoization of Czernowitz; conditions in the ghetto; hi...

  13. Jean L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jean L., who was born in Poland in 1924. He recalls his family's emigration to Paris in 1936 due to antisemitism; their strong socialist commitment; German invasion; joining the Resistance; brief incarceration in Drancy; participating in armed resistance; living under false papers; arrest on April 22, 1943; incarceration in Fresnes; transfer to Struthof on July 10, 1943; deportation to Birkenau in January 1944; a privileged assignment to Canada Kommando with help from a former friend; surviving a selection because of his status as a political prisoner; organized resis...

  14. Claire G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Claire G., who was born in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1923, the oldest of four daughters. She recalls a wonderful childhood in an affluent home; her family's orthodoxy; her paternal uncle and his children emigrating to Palestine in 1933; excitement, as a child, at seeing Hitler parade in her town; the sudden loss of non-Jewish friends due to the rise of Nazism; having to transfer to Jewish school; correspondence with a cousin in the United States to improve her English; writing of her desire to emigrate; her uncle obtaining papers for her; traveling with her mother to St...

  15. Annie C. Holocaust testimony with Jackie B.

    Videotape testimony of Annie C., who was born in England. She married a Frenchman in 1915 and moved to France with her husband and two-year-old child after World War I. She describes her pleasant prewar life in France, her daughter's flight from France before the German occupation, and the German occupation. She speaks of her unsuccessful attempts to leave France after the German occupation; her and her husband's flight; hiding with the help of her husband's non-Jewish relatives and French civilians; and using false papers. She stresses the continual fear of discovery and betrayal. She tell...

  16. Elefterios S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Elefterios S., a Greek Orthodox shepherd, who was born in Koumaria?, Greece in 1914. He recalls invasion by the German and Bulgarian armies in 1941; hiding their own weapons in February 1942 rather than following orders to surrender them to the Germans; the murder of four men from his village by the occupying troops; escaping to the hills during German attempts to confiscate food and livestock; and organizing 150 men into a resistance group. Mr. S. recounts hearing of anti-Jewish measures in Trikala, the closest town where Jews lived; organizing and leading the escape...

  17. Dov N. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Dov N., who was born in Nové Zámky, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovkia) in 1930, the fifth of six children. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; cordial relations with non-Jews; attending a Jewish school; Hungarian occupation in 1938; increasing antisemitism; his bar mitzvah; German occupation in March 1944; draft of his father and brother into a Hungarian slave labor battalion (they did not survive); ghettoization; deportation with his family to Auschwitz/Birkenau in June; a prisoner advising him upon arrival to say he was eighteen; separation from his mother, brother...

  18. Ben-Zion B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ben-Zion B., who was born in Domache?vo, Poland (presently Belarus) in 1924, the younger of two children. He recounts his father's death when he less than three; a close extended family; relatives emigrating to the United States; his mother's remarriage; the births of a brother and sister; attending cheder and Polish public school; antisemitic teachers; visits from his American uncle; his sister's marriage; brief German invasion; Soviet occupation; visiting his sister in Kosiv; German invasion in June 1941; witnessing a mass killing; forced labor; smuggling food to hi...

  19. Zenia M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Zenia M., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1921. She recalls her family's affluence; a rich cultural life; Soviet occupation; hiding to avoid deportation to Siberia; German occupation; round-ups; ghettoization; organized cultural activities; working outside the ghetto; a beating for smuggling food; obtaining munitions for the ghetto resistance (FPO); hiding Yiz?h?ak Wittenberg, a FPO leader; hiding with her parents during the ghetto's liquidation; their capture; deportation with her mother to Kaiserwald via Auschwitz; transfer to a labor camp; requesting transfer back...

  20. Johann F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Johann F., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1937. He recounts his parents' divorce in 1939; living with his mother, a violinist; frequent visits from his father; a normal life, despite anti-Jewish restrictions; spending summers and Jewish holidays with his maternal grandparents and great-grandparents in Karcag; his uncle's draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion in 1942 (they never saw him again); German invasion in March 1944; moving with his mother to his grandparents' home; their eviction; all of them living with his great-grandparents; ghettoization; non-...