Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 1,121 to 1,140 of 4,487
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Eric H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eric H., who was born in Gro?dek, Poland in 1908. He describes his family; engineering studies in Czechoslovakia; moving to Galicia for employment; and the demoralizing impact of Russian occupation in 1939. Mr. H. recalls joining his parents in Lwo?w; his marriage; moving to Boryslav; the May 1941 arrest of schoolchildren for celebrating a Polish holiday; the German attack in June; a brutal pogrom in which Jews were killed by the local population when the bodies of the arrested children were found and it was rumored Jews were responsible; and moral dilemmas of the Jud...

  2. Paula J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paula J., who was born in Radom, Poland in 1921. She speaks briefly of her happy childhood and her work as a tutor after the completion of her education. She vividly describes the German bombardment, occupation, and ghettoization of Radom and tells of conditions in the ghetto, where she first taught children in exchange for food and later volunteered for forced labor in an ammunition factory in order to smuggle food into the ghetto for her family. She recounts her separation from her parents (who later died in Treblinka) when she was required to live in the ammunition...

  3. Leo G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leo G., who was born in Vukovar, Yugoslavia in 1930. He documents the beliefs and activities of his father, a fifth generation cantor; his deeply religious family environment; his father's concern about the rise of Nazism; and the family's consequent relocation from Opava, Czechoslovakia to Copenhagen, Denmark in 1934. He describes the well-integrated Jewish community and the irrelevance of religious affiliation to the Danish national identity; German occupation in 1940; Danish insistence on control of domestic affairs (including the right to protect all citizens); an...

  4. Eitan P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eitan P., who was born in Khust, Czechoslovakia in 1928. He recalls participation in No'ar ha-Tsiyoni; German invasion; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from his mother upon arrival; slave labor with his brothers; seeing his father; learning his father was selected for death; the death march to Gleiwitz; train transportation to Dora/Nordhausen; a Hungarian soldier (a former neighbor) saving his brother; public hangings; slave labor; transfer to Bergen-Belsen (he never saw his brothers again); volunteering to burn corpses for extra food; and liberation by British t...

  5. Sarah S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sarah S., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1924, the oldest of three children. She recalls her father's death prior to the war; German invasion; ghettoization in spring 1940; saying she was older to obtain a job; working in the pharmacy; she and her sister hiding her mother and brother during a round-up; starvation; deportation with her family to Auschwitz; separation with her sister to a women's barrack (she never saw her mother or brother again); her sister's selection for death; transfer to Halbstadt four months later; slave labor in a mill; sabotaging the equipme...

  6. Alexander B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alexander B., who was born in Topol̕čany, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1919, one of ten children. He recalls his family's poverty; their secularism but observing Jewish holidays; the family's communist leanings; attending selective schools in Nitra and Prievidza, the only high school graduate in his family; draft into a labor brigade of the Slovak military in 1940; deportation with his family to Nováky in June 1942; slave labor in a quarry; his sister arranging his exemption from deportation through her influential dressmaking position; prisoners organizin...

  7. Sally C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sally C., who was born in Radom, Poland in 1928, the youngest of eight children. She recalls German invasion; her mother persuading her to volunteer for forced labor to avoid deportations; learning some siblings were deported; transfer with two sisters to Ostrowiec, then to Auschwitz, a year later, in June 1944; male prisoners whom they knew throwing them food; transfer six months later to Gebhardsdorf; a death march to Georgenthal; escape and recapture; liberation; returning to Poland seeking relatives; traveling to Czechoslovakia upon finding no one, then to Dachau ...

  8. Alejandro and Victoria Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alejandro Z., who was born near Pies?t?any, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (presently Slovakia) in 1913, and his wife Victoria Z., who was born in Pies?t?any in 1910. Ms. Z., a Roman Catholic, recalls German occupation; her brother, who was the mayor, warning Jews of deportations and refusing to implement anti-Jewish measures; visiting her future husband, a Jew, when he was incarcerated; arranging the escape of her fiance?, his brother, and parents; finding a hiding place for them; arrest with them in October 1944; being sent to Ilava, then Brno; deportation to camps inclu...

  9. Estelle B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Estelle B., who was born in Lask, Poland. She recounts a large, extended family; German invasion in 1939; ghettoization; hiding from round-ups; a public hanging; her older brother being taken as one of ten hostages and shot; round-up of the town's Jews to a church in 1942; transfer with her sister and another brother to the ?o?dz? ghetto; forced factory labor; deportation with her sister to Auschwitz in 1944; her sister sharing food and encouraging her; transfer with her sister to Neuko?lln; slave labor in a munitions factory; their transfer to Bergen-Belsen, Oranienb...

  10. Edith P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Edith P., who was born in Michalovce, Czechoslovakia 1920 and raised in Uz?h?horod. In an unusually poetic and expressive way, Mrs. P. describes her childhood in a middle class Jewish family; the Hungarian occupation in 1940-1941; anti-Jewish legislation; the indifference of her non-Jewish neighbors and friends; the deterioration of the Jewish situation under German occupation; the internment of her family in a brick factory outside her town; and their transfer two weeks later to Auschwitz. She recalls in detail the train ride to Auschwitz, then her arrival, upon whic...

  11. Steven H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Steven H., who was born in Amsterdam in 1938. Mr. H. tells of his parents' flight from Germany in 1936; the gradual round-up of Jews in Amsterdam after the German occupation; and the failed escape attempt of Mr. H., his parents, and his twin sister in 1943. He relates the family's deportation to Westerbork in the summer of 1943 for two months; his father's successful effort to have them released; the arrest of his mother, himself and his sister one week later; their return to Westerbork; and his father's voluntarily joining them. He tells of his father's bribery to tr...

  12. Genya B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Genya B., a twin, who was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1923. She recounts her brother's birth when she was three; a happy childhood in a loving family; her parents' illnesses during the 1930 famine period; her father's military draft; German invasion in June 1941; a mass round-up on September 29; a non-Jewish neighbor warning them to hide; brutal Ukrainian and German guards; her terror when she realized they would all be killed (she could hear the shots); separation from her family; she and a younger friend telling the guards they were not Jewish; their release; the neigh...

  13. Magda K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Magda K., who was born in Miskolc in 1916. She recalls her family's affluence; her brother attending university in France due to Jewish quotas; marriage in 1939; moving to Heves; being warned of impending danger; believing they would not be harmed in Hungary; her husband's draft into a Hungarian forced labor battalion in 1940; her son's birth in 1942; deportation in May 1944; discarding valuables rather than giving them to the Germans; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; a prisoner telling her upon arrival to give her son to an older woman; reluctantly giving him to a ...

  14. Sam N. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sam N., who was born in Przemys?l, Poland in 1920. He recalls apprenticing as a plumber from 1935 to 1939; Soviet occupation; German invasion in 1941; working as a plumber for the Germans; ghettoization; mass killings; witnessing many incidents when Josef Schwammberger, the German in charge of the ghetto, beat and killed Jews; his parent's deportation during the ghetto's liquidation; witnessing the last round-ups and killings of people who were hiding; deportation to another town; meeting his father; transfer to Auschwitz, then Birkenau, where he was selected as a mec...

  15. Otto K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Otto K., who was born in Prague to upper middle class parents around 1921. He speaks of joining a Zionist youth movement at the outbreak of the war; the deterioration of the Jewish situation in Prague; and his deportation to Terezin in May, 1942. He describes living conditions there, where he worked in a vegetable garden and was a member of the ghetto's Zionist council. He relates his and his family's transport to Auschwitz; their stay in Birkenau family camp B2B; his job caring for children from a children's barrack until July, 1944, when he was sent to Schwarzheide,...

  16. Ada L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ada L., who was born in Jarosław, Poland in 1915, the youngest of seven children. She recounts participating in Akiba; marriage; German invasion; her father's round-up and murder; one brother's escape to the Soviet zone; her husband's deportation (he was killed); deportation to Sobibór; meeting her future husband, Yitzchak Lichtman; assignment to the laundry; the stench of burning corpses; sharing food from incoming transports; learning of her mother's arrival; fellow prisoners preventing her from joining her mother; setting the table and standing close to Adolf Eich...

  17. Lilly T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lilly T., who was born in Zawiercie, Poland in 1928, the youngest of seven children. She recalls her comfortable childhood; German invasion; hiding in bunkers during round-ups; attending a clandestine school; her brothers' deportation to labor camps; ghettoization; pervasive hunger; forced factory labor making military uniforms; her father hiding when the ghetto was liquidated (he perished); deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her mother and a newborn sibling (they were gassed); grueling appels; helping her sisters (they did not survive); working in a munitions ...

  18. Elaine G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Elaine G., who was born in Czechoslovakia and raised in Poprad. She recounts a large extended family; holiday celebrations; participating in Makabi ha-tsa?ir; summers in Pres?ov; German invasion; expulsion from school in 1940; inclusion in a Hlinka guard round-up of older teenage girls in March 1942; transport to Auschwitz; slave labor building roads and in fields; receiving extra food from a friend's cousin; transfer to Birkenau; a privileged position in the hospital moving corpses (the privileges were receiving extra food, bathing, and not having to "stand appell");...

  19. Louis G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Louis G., who was born in Izvor, Czechoslovakia (presently Rodnikovka, Ukraine) in 1914, one of fifteen children. He recalls being the only Jewish family in town; attending school in Izvor, Svali?a?va, and Mukacheve; membership in Betar; attending law school in Prague; teaching from 1933 to 1938; hearing Vladimir Jabotinsky speak; Hungarian occupation; opening a candy store in Svali?a?va; conscription for a Hungarian labor battalion in March 1939; several releases and re-conscriptions; forced labor in Yugoslavia, the Carpathian Mountains, and Kisva?rda; marriage in 19...

  20. Sofia S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sofia S., who was born in Boryslav, Poland in 1917. She describes her family background; marriage; German invasion; her husband's draft into the Soviet army; her son's birth in September 1939; her mother's deportation; fleeing to Stanis?awo?w to save her son; pretending to be half Jewish when interrogated by Ukrainians; being hidden by Poles; returning to Boryslav; hiding her baby with a Polish family; Germans killing her son; being forced into the ghetto; brief imprisonment; release with assistance from her cousin; working as a cook for a German officer; deportation ...