Archival Descriptions

Advanced query tips

There are several ways to be more specific in your search query:

"Phrase"
Search an exact match of your query, e.g. "Member lists"
+Phrase
Given word has to be in the result, e.g. +Gestapo
-Phrase
Exclude given word from search, e.g. -Gestapo

Use the following syntax to restrict the search to specific fields:

field:"phrase"
For instance, you can find all descriptions that have the phrase "Auschwitz Birkenau" in their titles by searching for title:"Auschwitz Birkenau".

The following fields are currently available:

  • identifier
  • title
  • creator
  • person
  • place
  • subject
  • address
Displaying items 2,121 to 2,140 of 4,487
Search result ordering
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Hana K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hana K., who was born in Strzemieszyce Wielke, Poland in 1926 to a family of eight children. She recalls her father's death in 1930; German invasion; anti-Jewish measures; deportation of two of her brothers; escaping during a round-up by Jewish police; forced factory work in the ghetto; obtaining a job for her mother to protect her from deportation; hiding with a sister during the ghetto's liquidation; deportation with her sisters to a shoe factory (she never saw her mother and brothers again); forced labor in Ludwigsdorf; liberation; marriage; traveling with her husb...

  2. Jaire J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jaire J., who was born in Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1912. He recalls attending university; his Hungarian patriotism; working as a textile engineer; anti-Jewish laws beginning in 1938; brief draft into Hungarian forced labor battalions in 1940 and 1941; being recalled in 1942; serving in Kiev and on the Russian front doing menial and dangerous labor; a humane supervisor; escaping with a large group in 1944; entering Majdanek shortly after its liberation; realizing the immense Jewish destruction; being sent to a forced labor camp in Siberia; release in 1946...

  3. Willi E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Willi E., a Romani, who was born in East Prussia, Germany in 1927. He remembers traveling and performing prior to Hitler's ascent to power; racial laws requiring them to live in barracks in 1937-1938; persecution of Jews; deportation of young Romani men; his deportation to a prison camp in Bia?ystok; witnessing a mass killing of Jews in Brzesc Litewski (Brest); deportation to Auschwitz in 1943 (his mother and two siblings were gassed); slave labor; transfer to Bergen-Belsen in 1944; liberation by British troops in 1945; searching for relatives; marriage; and postwar h...

  4. Rudy F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rudy F., who was born in Munka?cs, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine), in 1922, the older of two children. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; their affluence; attending a Czech, then a Hebrew school; belonging to Betar; his parents' many charitable acts; Hungarian occupation in 1938; antisemitism among his peers; the brutality of the Hungarian field police; draft with his uncle into a Hungarian slave labor battalion in 1942; assignments in Szombathely, Uz?h?horod, and other locations; working for Organisation Todt; transfer to Gunskirchen, then Mauthausen; death march...

  5. Maurice M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Maurice M., who was born in Krako?w, Poland in 1922. He recalls his confusion at the arrival of Jews expelled from Germany; German invasion; deportation to a labor camp in November 1939; his mother arranging his escape to Tarno?w by bribing a German; living with his brother and sister in Niepo?omice; an emotional meeting with his mother outside the ghetto with assistance from a German (he never saw her again); digging mass graves and burying corpses in Wieliczka; transfer to P?aszo?w; working for a cable factory; joining his brother in the Krako?w ghetto with assistan...

  6. Heinz K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Heinz K., who was born in Karlovy Vary, Czechoslovakia in 1927. He describes growing up in Thessalonike?; German invasion in April 1941; anti-Jewish measures; ghettoization in 1943; deportation to Auschwitz; his parents' assignment as translators (he and his family spoke German); a death march and train transport to Mauthausen in January 1945; looking for his mother and sister en route (he did not find them); transfer to Melk, then Ebensee; separation from his father; hospitalization; and liberation by United States troops.

  7. Etka W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Etka W., who was born in Brzesko Nowe, Poland, in 1925. Mrs. W. speaks of her orthodox childhood in a small village; stealing into a church to observe a Catholic wedding; anti-Semitic measures after the German occupation; concealing her yellow star; her father's attempts to provide kosher meat to customers; and hiding with her family in late 1942 in the attic of a Polish farmer. She tells of another Jewish woman and child whom the farmer fed; almost being discovered when the farmer came under suspicion; staying in the attic until April 1945 (two months after liberatio...

  8. Louise J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Louise J., who was born in Krako?w, Poland in 1925. She recalls a happy childhood in an affluent family; growing antisemitism in the late 1930s; German invasion; anti-Jewish measures; ghettoization; hiding during round-ups, having been warned through her father's connections with the Judenrat; transfer to P?aszo?w in March 1943; separation from her father and brother; slave labor in an ammunition factory; her mother's deportation (she never saw her again); random killings and beatings by the Kommandant, Amon Goeth; public hangings; working briefly in Wieliczka with he...

  9. Hermina A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hermina A., who was born to a Roman Catholic family in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1919. She recalls wonderful relations with Jews; German invasion; marriage in 1941; her son's birth in 1942; her brothers' compulsory forced labor in Germany; her husband obtaining false papers to leave Holland to escape forced labor; observing Jews disappearing; joining an underground unit; acting as a courier; capture; arranging for her son to be with her parents; imprisonment and torture in Amsterdam and Arnhem; not divulging any names she knew; transfer to Vught after several months; ...

  10. Edgar A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Edgar A., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1923. He describes moving to Warsaw with his family in 1934 due to antisemitism; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; ghettoization; starvation and deportations; along with his mother, sister and aunt, being exempted from deportation due to his aunt's position as head of the children's hospital; participating in a classical orchestra; his sister's death; his father's escape to the Aryan side in January 1943; joining his father and aunt outside the ghetto; hiding with his father and aunt in a Polish friend's apartment ...

  11. John W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of John W., who was born in Mo?nchengladbach, Germany in 1920. He describes his assimilated family background; his bar mitzvah in 1933; disbelief anything would happen to them because his father was a World War I veteran; changes beginning in 1934; the Nuremberg laws; his brother's emigration to England in 1937; his parents' arranging to ship their possessions to the United States; obtaining passports; his father's arrest on Kristallnacht and incarceration in Dachau; and emigrating to the United States after his father's release in June 1940. Mr. W. discusses how appeali...

  12. Harry W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Harry W., who was born in Bez?ovce, Czechoslovakia in 1916. He tells of moving to Uz?h?horod in 1920; attending public and Hebrew school; the beauty and peace of their Shabbat observance; being stabbed by another boy in an anti-Semitic incident; studying at the Yeshivas in Mukachevo and Bratislava; and leaving in 1938 because of the Hungarian occupation of his hometown. He describes being drafted into a Hungarian labor battalion; working in many places in Hungary, Yugoslavia and the Ukraine; harsh conditions and lack of food; working in Budapest where he could leave t...

  13. Theodore P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Theodore P., who served in the United States 3rd Army. He recounts being trained to interrogate German POWs; deployment to Europe in October 1944; moving through France; assignment to the 261st regiment; front line interrogations in Germany; entering Ohrdruf hours after liberation; corpses stacked "like wood"; a prisoner showing him a mass killing site; shock at the condition of the prisoners and learning of their experiences; local Germans denying knowledge of the camp; traveling to Mauthausen weeks after its liberation; speaking with the few remaining survivors and ...

  14. Julius G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Julius G., who was born in Scharnhorst, Germany in 1914, one of five children. He recounts his father's death from World War I wounds; attending public school; his family's move to Hamm in 1924; participating in a leftist Jewish club, then a socialist group (SAJ); harassment by an antisemitic teacher; joining a communist youth group (KJV); expulsion from school for communist activities; attending gymnasium in Münster from 1931-1933; his bar mitzvah; visiting his nanny's family in Scharnhorst; narrowly escaping arrest; traveling to Cologne; living with relatives in Tr...

  15. Jeanine C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jeanine C., who was born in 1928. She recounts her mother's death in 1932; living in a Jewish orphanage in Paris; German invasion; evacuation to Berck-sur-Mer; returning to Paris in 1940; dispersion of the orphans by UGIF to avoid deportations; her section's deportation to Drancy in July 1944; deportation to Birkenau in August; remaining together with fifteen EIF scouts (including Yvette L.); slave labor in Auschwitz; transfer to Kratzau in November; work in a munitions factory; receiving food from a supervisor; a friend giving birth and being transfered (mother and b...

  16. Paul S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paul S., who was born in Vilna, Poland (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1932, an only child. He recalls a close relationship with his maternal grandparents who lived with them; antisemitic harassment; Soviet occupation; German invasion; confiscation of the family businesses and apartment; a German soldier allowing him and his mother to sleep there to avoid round-ups; ghettoization; attending school and cultural events; visiting his grandparents in the small ghetto; its liquidation shortly thereafter (he never saw them again); hiding during round-ups; rumors of mass k...

  17. Liza S. Holocaust testimonies

    Videotape testimony of Liza S., who was born in Lut?s??k, Poland in 1925. She recalls ghettoization in 1941; her younger sister's murder; forced labor near Kremenet?s??; falling in love with another prisoner; being smuggled to visit her family in Lut?s??k; transfer with her boyfriend to the Kremenet?s?? ghetto; and feigning death when all the Jews were shot in a pit. Mrs. S. recounts climbing naked from the pit at night; discovering that her boyfriend had also survived; hiding for six months in the forest; receiving assistance from local people; her boyfriend's murder when he visited his fa...

  18. Irene F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Irene F., who was born in Satu Mare, Romania in 1925, the oldest of eight children. She recalls her grandfather's large successful farm, that he divided among his children, including her family; attending school; Hungarian occupation; anti-Jewish laws preventing her entry to high school; ghettoization in 1944; deportation shortly thereafter to Auschwitz; separation with her sister and six cousins from their families; a public hanging; transfer six weeks later to Gelsenkirchen; slave labor clearing bombing rubble; transfer after three months to a camp where they were a...

  19. Isaac B., Boris L., and Isiya M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimonies of Isaac B., Boris L., and Isiya M. Isaac B. recalls his large, extended family in Tulʹchin; deportation to Peciora in December 1941; his mother's death; surviving because his grandfather was selected as a skilled craftsman, hid him, and his older siblings, and smuggled them food from outside the camp; his father's military service; and not being able to locate his mother's burial site after the war. Isiya M. recounts deportation from Tulʹchin to Peciora (she was about four years old); her older brother leaving the camp to bring them food; and Isaac's mother being take...

  20. Miland B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Miland B., who was born in Mukacheve, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1927 to a Hasidic family of five children. He recounts antisemitic violence; Hungarian occupation in 1938; anti-Jewish restrictions, including confiscation of the family business; apprenticeship to a watchmaker; clandestinely observing Jewish holidays; three-week ghettoization; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation from his parents and younger brothers; encountering his sister; urging her to stay alive; slave labor on a vegetable farm; public hangings; the suicide of a friend's father;...