Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 3,701 to 3,720 of 4,487
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Allegra and Henry A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Allegra A., who was born in Salonika, Greece in 1910, and her husband Henry, who joins her for the last half hour. She recounts her youth as the oldest of seven children in an observant family; education in a French Jewish school; apprenticing as a seamstress; working in her family's textile dyeing plant; her arranged courtship and marriage; extensive volunteer work for the Jewish National Fund; the birth of her son in 1939; and escaping Italian air raids in 1940. She recalls the arrival of German troops; anti-Jewish measures; persuading her husband not to register fo...

  2. John F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of John F., who served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. He recalls being assigned to an information gathering unit; traveling as a group of four to assignments and conveying their findings to their commander; assignment to visit Buchenwald; not being able to have imagined what they saw; being shown parts of the camp by an English-speaking guide, a former prisoner; disgust at the sights and smells; and continuing on to future assignments. Mr. F. discusses serving on the governor's Holocaust Committee and implementing Holocaust curriculum for sixth,...

  3. Lea W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lea W., who was born in Poland in 1921, and moved to Paris with her family in 1929 due to increasing antisemitism. She recalls active participation in Hashomer Hatzair; German invasion; her boyfriend's incarceration in Pithiviers in 1941; obtaining false documents verifying she was born in France; visiting her boyfriend; assisting him to escape to Toulouse, then their return to Paris; their marriage; moving to Dordogne, fearing discovery in Paris; non-Jews assisting her husband to obtain excellent false documents and local residence registration for them and her paren...

  4. Bart S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Bart S., who was born in Uz?horod, Czechoslovakia and was twelve at the time of the Hungarian occupation in November 1938. He recalls Jewish refugees who fled from Sudetenland; being terrified that a Jewish community could disintegrate so rapidly; anti-Jewish laws; German occupation in 1944; suicides in the cattle car during deportation to Birkenau; transfer with his two older brothers to Auschwitz; slave labor in a coal mine in Jaworzno; his sense of complete hopelessness; transfer to a death block in Birkenau; hiding during evacuation in January 1945 (his brothers p...

  5. Sida S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sida S., who was born in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in 1921. She recalls her family's move to Belgrade in 1934; involvement in Hashomer Hatzair; attending medical school; German invasion; hiding with her sister's non-Jewish friends; traveling to Tuzla with her boyfriend and brother to escape Ustaša killings; doing forced labor in her mother's place; sending photos of her parents to a relative in Mostar to obtain false papers; her father's and brother's arrest by Ustaša; receiving the false papers and a Muslim disguise; escaping with her mother to Italian-occupied Mostar; ...

  6. Morris K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Morris K., who was born in 1926 in ?o?dz?, Poland. He recalls German invasion; being caught in a round-up in December 1939; forced labor near Hamburg; transfer to Poznan? in March 1941 when it was discovered he was Jewish; transfer to the ?o?dz? ghetto in February 1943; reunion with his father; and deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau several days later. Mr. K. tells of a privileged work assignment obtained through a friend; two weeks in the punishment camp in March 1944; transfer to the Sonderkommando; working at the cremation pits into which guards threw living childre...

  7. Leo L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leo L., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1924. In addition to information in a previously recorded testimony (HVT-729), Mr. L. recounts working in a textile workshop in Auschwitz; privileged work transporting potatoes at Ohrdruf; protection from the German guard; hospitalization after being kicked by an Ukrainian guard; losing his privileged position; the German guard "saving his life" by reclaiming him for his group; a death march in March 1945; escaping with a Soviet POW and others; returning to Ohrdruf; liberation; traveling to Gotha; a Jewish-American soldier pro...

  8. Edith F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Edith F., who was born in a small town in Czechoslovakia and moved to Mukacheve when she was seven. She recalls her oldest brother's emigration to the United States in 1938; Hungarian occupation; ghettoization in spring 1944; deportation with her family to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation by gender; assignment to Canada Kommando with her mother, sister, and aunt; smuggling food and clothing to others; protecting her mother; observing Jewish holidays; her sister's transfer, then her's, to a labor camp; slave labor in a communications equipment factory; staying with a chi...

  9. Joseph M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph M., who was born in Szczakowa, Poland, in 1922. He speaks of family life before the war; the mistreatment and killings of Jews at the beginning of the war; his 1940 deportation to Sakrau, where he was a slave laborer; and his transfer to Gross Masselwitz in 1942. He describes a typical day in Neukirch, a labor camp he was sent to in 1943, and conditions in the camps to which he was subsequently sent: Marksta?dt, Schmiedeberg, Klettendorf, and Waldenburg, where he was liberated by the Russians in 1945. He discusses his postwar return home; his reunion with his s...

  10. Leon W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leon W., who was born in Radzymin, Poland in 1911. He recounts traveling between Radzymin and the Warsaw ghetto; learning of the upcoming deportation of the Jews from Radzymin; arranging his wife's and daughter's escape; deportation of his father, siblings, and other family to Treblinka in 1942; fleeing to a labor camp near Radzymin; escaping before the camp's liquidation; fleeing with his wife and daughter to Warsaw; leaving their eighteen-month-old daughter on the doorstep of a lawyer's house hoping to save her; arranging for his wife to be a housekeeper for a Polis...

  11. Mendel F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mendel F., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1924, the youngest of four children. Mr. F. describes active participation in S.K.I.F., the youth organization of the Bund; one brother's death from illness in 1936; German invasion in 1939; ghettoization; starvation, poor sanitation, and high death rates; he and other youths protesting the lack of food in March 1941; joining a group of friends giving their flour rations to a sick friend; assisting with organizing schools and youth activities; his other brother being shot in 1942; hiding with his parents, sister, and relati...

  12. Anne-Marie R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anne-Marie R., who was born in Krefeld, Germany in 1925. She describes her assimilated family who had lived in Germany since 1630; moving to Mannheim; friendships with non-Jews; being beaten by other children after school and being helped by her non-Jewish friends; moving to Switzerland because her mother had tuberculosis; her mother's death in 1938; moving to Holland with her stepfather and maternal grandmother; and the German invasion when her stepfather was in Brazil. She recalls moving to Bussum; attending a public school for one year; having to wear a star and no...

  13. Henri E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henri E., who was born in Paris, France in 1916, one of five children. He recalls participating in organized sports; military service in 1937 in Metz; assignment to the Maginot Line in August 1939; retreating during the German invasion in 1940; being wounded; evacuation to Vichy; nineteen months hospitalization; activities for the Resistance while on furloughs from the hospital; meeting his sister in Clermont-Ferrand; participating in bombing Vichy government and Gestapo offices; his sister's arrest, then his on September 13, 1942; imprisonment in several places; a fa...

  14. Paula S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paula S., who was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1912. She recounts her family's evacuation to England during World War I; returning home; their poverty; her father's death; one sister emigrating to England (she had been born there); participating in communist youth activities; German invasion; organizing anti-Nazi activities; joining the partisans; defying anti-Jewish restrictions; her mother's and sister-in-law's deportations (she never saw them again); hiding using false papers; arrest; imprisonment in Antwerp and St. Gilles; transfer to Breendonk, then Malines; not r...

  15. Shirley W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Shirley W., who was born in Poland circa 1924. She tells of the German occupation and describes the massacres of Jews which followed. Her mother, grandmother, and older sister were killed during this time. Mrs. W. explains that by hiding in a bunker, she, her father, and her younger sister were able to avoid deportation from the ghetto to which they were confined. She relates their experiences in hiding, first in the countryside surrounding the ghetto, and later in the forest where they lived with the partisans. Mrs. W. also mentions spending four years after the war ...

  16. Kurt M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Kurt M., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1915. He recalls his excellent education prior to 1933; Hitler's ascent to power; anti-Jewish restrictions barring him from university; cantorial training; teaching in a Jewish school; the trauma of Kristallnacht; deportation to Theresienstadt in 1943; conducting religious services; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in fall 1944 (he later learned his wife volunteered to follow him); remaining with his brother; observing prisoners trampling another prisoner to death because he had sent others to their deaths; the stench of bu...

  17. Hella D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hella D., who was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1924. She recounts her parents' divorce in 1929; moving with her mother to Berlin; returning to her father in Amsterdam in January 1939 (her mother moved to London); placement in an orphanage (her father's wife did not want her); working in a hat shop; visiting her father and his three children; German invasion; nursing training at a Jewish hospital; obtaining false papers; she and a friend escaping a round-up at the hospital; moving to another Jewish hospital; hiding during round-ups; a friend's offer to contact the...

  18. Daniel C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Daniel C., who was born in Thessalonike?, Greece in 1913. He remembers his family of three brothers and one sister, who with his parents, perished in Auschwitz; cordial relations with non-Jews; his participation in athletics; work as a pharmacist; German occupation of Greece in 1941; and persecution of Jews beginning in 1942. Mr. C. describes deportation to Auschwitz in May 1943; horrendous conditions during the seven day trip; last seeing his parents upon leaving the box cars; working as a nurse in the hospital; losing that job and being beaten because he stole bread...

  19. Linda B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Linda B., who was born in Stropkov, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1924, a twin and one of six children. She recalls cordial relations with non-Jews prior to 1939; attending tailoring school in Bratislava in 1940; forced expulsion; moving to Prešov; arrest on March 24, 1942; deportation to Auschwitz (the first Jewish females there) via Poprad; transfer to Birkenau; slave labor building roads; starvation, suicides, frequent killings by guards and corpses everywhere; transfer to Canada Kommando, where she could obtain extra food; being forced to give blood for ...