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 3,481 to 3,500 of 4,487
Search result ordering
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Carl G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Carl G., who was born in Vec?a, Czechoslovakia, in 1929. Mr. G. recalls childhood in the large family of a cantor and kosher butcher; attending a German language school in Bratislava; returning home when the borders closed in 1938; ghettoization in 1944; his father's conscription into a Hungarian labor battalion; hiding his mother's rings in the garbage pit; her refusal to leave her children with Romanies; deportation to a brick works in E?rseku?jvar; transport to Birkenau; believing the crematoria to be bakeries; and throwing food to female inmates. He relates incarc...

  2. Irene B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Irene B., a twin, who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1926. She recalls her father's position as a district attorney; attending a Catholic school; her father's dismissal from his job due to the Nuremberg laws; expulsion from school; attending a Jewish school; no longer having servants, although one, an anti-Nazi, continued to work for them; their chauffeur warning her father to leave; men coming for him; his return a week later; seeing damage after Kristallnacht; placement with her sister on a kindertransport; arrival in London in January 1939; attending a Jewish board...

  3. Sola B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sola B., who was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1911 and moved with her family to Berlin, Germany, in 1920. Mrs. B. describes her childhood and family life; her many non-Jewish friends; increasing anti-Semitic behavior and legislation; the deportation of her father, a Polish Jew, in 1938; rescuing her father-in-law from Sachsenhausen; being smuggled, along with her husband, into Antwerp; her life in the United States; and her attempts to educate her children as to the meaning of her experiences. Mrs. B. also discusses her feelings regarding the possibility of a recurr...

  4. Simon F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Simon F., who was born in Paris, France in 1926. He recounts his parents were Polish immigrants; living in the Jewish area (Marais); German invasion; traveling south hoping to assist the French military; returning to Paris after France was divided; imposition of anti-Jewish restrictions; round-ups; his father leaving for unoccupied France; smuggling the remainder of the family to join his father in Avignon; joining the Resistance; obtaining false papers for the entire family; one sister being hidden in a convent; other family, including his parents, hiding with non-Je...

  5. Irving G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Irving G., who was born in 1919 and served with the United States Army in a signal battalion in World War II. He recounts landing at Omaha Beach; moving toward Germany during the Battle of the Bulge; entering a concentration camp after the Germans had left; emaciated inmates who looked like "skeletons"; soldiers giving them their rations; speaking Yiddish with a prisoner; later entering Nordhausen; piles of corpses; the pervasive stench; locals feigning ignorance of the camp; and not sharing his experiences after returning home. Mr. G. discusses nightmares about the c...

  6. Cyla D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Cyla D., who was born in Drohobych, Ukraine (then Poland), in 1915, the youngest of six children of an oil well owner. Mrs. D. describes a happy childhood; her musical education; living with her sister in Stryi? when the war began; Soviet occupation; marriage to an attorney in 1940; her daughter's birth in 1941; German invasion; her mother being taken in the first round-up (she later learned she was killed); her father committing suicide; giving birth while hiding with her husband in Boryslav (the baby could not be saved); numerous instances of assistance from her fat...

  7. Charles N. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Charles N., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1924 . He recounts his family's emigration to Paris in about 1927; attending public school; training as a dental technician; fleeing with two brothers to Vazerac when Germany invaded; returning to Paris; working at farms in the country-side to hide; returning to Paris; his oldest brother's death from illness in 1941; being warned of the Vélodrome d'hiver round-up in July 1942; his mother arranging for a non-Jew to take him and his brother south; traveling by train to Bourges; arrest; imprisonment as non-Jews; transfer to ...

  8. Yosef S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Yosef S., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1921, one of four children. He recounts attending public school; participating in Hashomer Hatzair and a sports group; German invasion; one brother's escape to Lʹviv; a non-Jew smuggling him and his father to Warsaw to meet this brother and escape to the Soviet Union; his father's return to Łódź; attemptinig to enter the Soviet zone with his brother via Siedlce; capture by the Soviets; being sent back to Warsaw; returning to the Łódź ghetto; working as a carpenter, sabotaging furniture he built for the Germans; building ...

  9. David O. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of David O., who was born in a Polish village in 1916, one of five children. He describes his orthodox childhood, attending a local public school and cheder; his bar mitzvah in 1929; attending yeshivahs in Kielce and Be?dzin; living on an orthodox hachsharah for a year, preparing to emigrate to Palestine; working in Olkusz; conscription into the Polish military in March 1939; German invasion six months later; capture by Germans; a Polish farmer informing him Jews were being sent away; escaping with assistance from the farmer; returning home; his mother's death in 1941; h...

  10. Yehoshua L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Yehoshua L., who was born in approximately 1923 and raised in Lakhva, Poland (presently Belarus), one of five children. He recalls attending a local Yavneh school, then yeshiva in Luninets; his father's death in 1938; Soviet occupation in 1939; his sister's evacuation east during the German invasion in June 1941; his futile attempt to flee east; slave labor for Organisation Todt; ghettoization in spring 1942; solidarity promoted by the Judenrat led by Dov Lopatin; bringing food to Jews in a Hungarian slave labor battalion when they passed through; non-Jews informing t...

  11. David P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of David P., who was born in Tilsit, Germany (presently Sovetsk, Kaliningradskai?a? oblast?, R.S.F.S.R.) in 1912. He describes living in Ri?ga; friendships with non-Jews; Latvians killing Jews immediately before the arrival of German troops in 1941; ghettoization; forced labor; burial of Jewish documents, including writings of Simon Dubnow; learning of the mass murder of almost all of Ri?ga's Jews (including his family) at Rumbuli; and the arrival of Austrian, German, and Czech Jews to the ghetto. Mr. P. recalls severely injuring his hand while working on Rosh ha-Shanah;...

  12. Laura M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Laura M., who was a social worker for the National Refugee Service, then the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. She recalls arriving in Havana, Cuba in February 1939; dealing with many German Jewish refugees; knowing in advance the St. Louis was arriving and its passengers would not be allowed to disembark; the staff not sleeping for the eight days the ship was in harbor in their efforts to assist; her colleague visiting the ship daily; arranging disembarkation in European countries other than Austria and Germany; transfer to Shanghai in April 1941; working...

  13. Sonia H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sonia H., who was born in Oleye?vo-Korole?vka, Poland (presently Ukraine) in 1933. She remembers cordial relations with non-Jews; Soviet occupation; her father hiding to avoid deportation to Siberia; Hungarian, then German invasion in 1941; hiding in bunkers in her grandmother's house; her paternal grandparents being caught in a round-up; moving to Bi?lche to hide in a grotto; her mother and sister being caught; their release after her father bribed officials; hiding in her father's friend's barn, a forest, then another grotto beginning in May 1943; local peasants pro...

  14. Maximilian L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Maximilian L., who was born in 1924 in Vienna, Austria. He tells of his father's service for Austria in World War I; hearing of Jewish persecution in Germany from emigre? relatives; his strong Austrian patriotism; harassment of Jews following the Anschluss; being able to leave Austria because his father retained his Czech citizenship; arrival in Paris; satisfaction at fighting back at anti-Semitic incidents in school; family applications for emigration to Australia, Canada, or the United States; and German invasion of Paris. Mr. L. recalls leaving Paris in a massive e...

  15. Israel and Shalom L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Israel L., who was born in Subotica, Yugoslavia in 1936 and his brother Shalom L., who was born in 1940. They recall their extended family; their orthodoxy; their father's compulsory service in a Hungarian slave labor battalion; moving to Budapest with their mother and sisters; living with their maternal grandparents; forced relocation; being placed with the Kasztner group due to their grandfather's and cousin's influence; deportation from the Dohany synagogue to Bergen-Belsen via Linz; remaining with the group which received better treatment; transfer to Saint Gall, ...

  16. Maria S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Maria S., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1926, the younger of two sisters. She recalls her mother's death in 1937; her sister's emigration to the United States in 1938; completing primary school in 1939; German invasion; bombings; escaping with her father three months later to the Soviet zone; living in Białystok and a nearby town; deportation with her father to Siberia; forced labor in a forest; the supervisor helping her avoid the difficult work; being allowed to leave after the German invasion; moving to Tashkent; marriage to a Polish Jew; working as a telephon...

  17. Joseph B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph B., who was born in Proszowice, Poland in 1923. He recalls antisemitic incidents during his childhood; German invasion; slave labor in Piotrkowice; hiding with his parents in the fields during the first deportation in 1942; moving to the Krako?w ghetto; hiding with his parents, brother, and uncle on a nearby farm; assistance from a Polish woman; returning to the ghetto; deportation with his parents to Birkenau after the ghetto's liquidation on March 12, 1942; slave labor in the coal mine in Jawiszowitz; praying with other inmates on Yom Kippur; acquiring a priv...

  18. Peter G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape of Peter G., who was born in Baden-Baden, Germany in 1918. He recalls a comfortable childhood; attending public school in Baden-Baden and religious school in Karlsruhe; attempts to expel him from school due to the Nuremberg laws; the principal's insistence that he finish school; his family's emigration in 1938; an eight month internship in Switzerland; returning to Germany; joining a brother in Warsaw; working in Zakopane; returning to Warsaw; German invasion; fleeing to the Soviet zone; his arrest while trying to illegally enter Hungary; imprisonment in Odesa; being sentenced to ...

  19. Lillian Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lillian Z., who was born in 1928 in Czechoslovakia. She recalls Hungarian occupation; conscription of men for forced labor; German invasion; her brother's illness and death; transfer with her extended family to the Munka?cs ghetto in April 1944; transport to Auschwitz in May; separation from her family; a pregnant woman whose baby was killed shortly after its birth; transfer to Gelsenkirchen; a German who helped the prisoners hide during an air raid; transfer in September to Soemmerda; a six-week death march in March 1945; disappearance of the guards; and liberation b...

  20. Thea S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Thea S., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1921, an only child. She recalls visiting relatives in Poland; living with her mother in Germany for a year in the late 1920s; attending gymnasium; participating in Maccabi and other Zionist organizations; the Anschluss in March 1938; dismissal of her Jewish teachers; prohibition from employing their non-Jewish maid; Nazi harassment; being forced to move many times; her boyfriend's arrest on Kristallnacht; non-Jewish neighbors hiding her father; obtaining British travel documents with assistance from an uncle in London; trav...