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 1,161 to 1,180 of 4,487
Search result ordering
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Anna S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anna S., who was born in Minsk, Belarus in 1930. She recounts living in Bielsk; not knowing she was Jewish until German invasion; her father's draft into the Soviet army; traveling with her mother to Minsk; fires and chaos; their journey to relatives in Dorogobuzhskii?; a brief visit from her father; traveling to Gorky (Nizhnii? Novgorod) as the Germans advanced, then to Astrakhan?; living with a non-Jewish family for one year; German bombings; fleeing to Tashkent; assistance from the Bukharan Jewish community; living in Kattaqurghon; returning to Minsk in 1944; wide-...

  2. Amelia D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Amelia D., who was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1939. She recounts having no memories of Amsterdam; having a brother, a year older, and a sister, a year younger; staying with non-Jewish families in Belgium; having to change her name; separation from her brother; brief imprisonment of the father in the first family because they did not have papers (he eventually obtained false papers); hiding in cellars and not being allowed to go near windows; her father's sister and brother finding them after the war; reunion with her brother; reluctance to leave the last family...

  3. Celine P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Celine P., who was born in Zgierz, Poland, one of four children. She recalls her family's affluence; visiting relatives in Warsaw; a close and large extended family; attending a Polish school; antisemitic harassment; German invasion in September 1939; her father's flight east; exemption from deportation due to an uncle sending foreign visas to her, her mother, and siblings; assistance from a former nanny who worked for the Gestapo; transport to Belgium via Berlin; reunion with their uncle who had arranged their emigration; traveling to Paris where "everything was back...

  4. Belle S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Belle S., who was born in Szyd?owiec, Poland in approximately 1924, one of four children. She recounts her family's poverty; attending school; increasing antisemitism in the 1930s; German invasion; her father's death from typhus in 1942; her older brother's deportation; hiding; deportation with her brother and his girlfriend to Skarz?ysko-Kamienna; her brother hiding her and providing food for her when she was sick; slave labor in a munitions factory; transfer with her brother and his girlfriend in 1944 to Cze?stochowa; hospitalization for one month; the doctor giving...

  5. Leon E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leon E., who was born in Kielce, Poland in 1920, one of eleven children. He recalls nine years of schooling; learning his father's business; the outbreak of war; returning to Kielce from the city where he worked; ghettoization; liquidation of the ghetto in 1942; transport to Pionki in Radom, where he worked in a munitions factory with two of his brothers; transport to Auschwitz in 1944; and work at Buna-Monowitz in the I.G. Farben factory for a few days. Mr. E. describes transfer, with his older brother, to Jawischowitz; work in the coal mines; the inhumane conditions...

  6. Dora S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Dora S., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1913, the younger of two daughters. She recounts her father's emigration to the United States; his return; their move to Essen; vacationing in Sylt; attending private school; an antisemitic teacher giving her poor grades; joining the Jüdischer Jugendverband; her family's refusal to emigrate; her emigration to Amsterdam; assistance from the Jewish community; working as a maid, then a furrier; meeting her future husband, a Communist; working for Rote Hilfe/Roode Hulp; moving with him to Paris; his arrest by the French police;...

  7. Hilde L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hilde L., who was born in Aldenhoven, Germany in 1924. She describes her family's orthodoxy; attending a Catholic school; expulsion of Jewish students in 1937; attending a Jewish school; moving to Aachen; her father's arrest on Kristallnacht; his incarceration in Buchenwald and release a month later provided he would leave Germany; his journey to Belgium with her sister; her mother's painful departure from her seven sisters, most of whom perished during the war; traveling to Belgium with her mother using false papers in 1939; reunion with her sister and father in Brus...

  8. Monique B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Monique B., who was born in Bogoria, Poland in 1935. She recalls living in Mielec where her father was a kosher slaughterer; German invasion; hiding her father during a round-up of men; fleeing with her family to Bogoria; hiding in a forest with many Jews; escaping a mass killing (her father and siblings were shot); finding her mother; assistance from Polish peasants; hiding with her mother with a Polish family; her mother's murder; being baptized; learning the catechism; being taken to a Jewish orphanage in ?o?dz? by a distant cousin in 1945; relocation of the orphan...

  9. Heda K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Heda K., who was born in Prague. In this vivid and insightful testimony, Mrs. K., a writer, tells of the absence of antisemitism among the Czechs; the consequent inability of many Jews, including her father, to understand the mortal danger they faced; and her deportation, by train, to the ?o?dz? ghetto. She describes various aspects of life in the ghetto, including the selections, random violence, hunger, and spiritual resistance; the children in the ghetto; and H?ayim Rumkowski. Her deportation, with her parents, to Auschwitz; her parting gift to them of poison; and ...

  10. Stanley M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Stanley M., who was born in 1926 and enlisted in the United States military at age eighteen. He recalls having no awareness of what a concentration camp was or the systematic killing of Jews prior to entering Mauthausen with the 65th Infantry Division; having two sets of dog tags so he could not be identified as a Jew in case of capture; keeping the former prisoners in Mauthausen so they would not leave and overeat; their disbelief that he was a Jewish solider; obtaining contact information from the prisoners to inform relatives in the United States that they were ali...

  11. Walter K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Walter K., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1929. He describes his affluent and large, extended family; German occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions; fleeing to Kielce with his family; ghettoization; a mass killing in 1941, including his sister; deportation to Pionki with his father; slave labor at an ammunition factory; public hangings; help from a Polish worker; transfer with his father to Auschwitz in September 1943; sorting clothes in Birkenau; transfer to Sosnowiec; assignment to the kitchen; sharing extra food with his father; evacuation to Mauthausen in Novembe...

  12. Gregory F. Holocaust testimony

    Video testimony of Gregory F., a non-Jew, who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1941. He relates experiences as a "displaced person" in his own country when he and his family were relocated by the Germans from Vienna to a small Austrian town.

  13. Rella C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rella C., who was born in Cluj, Romania in 1927. She recalls antisemitic harassment at school; her religious, close family; Hungarian occupation; a brother's draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion; ghettoization with her uncle's family, her sister, and sister's fiancé; deportation to Auschwitz; staying with her sister and aunt's niece; slave labor; living in complete fear; cursing God; separation from her sister; having blood drawn; transfer with her aunt's niece to Bergen-Belsen; finding her sister; hospitalization; visits from her aunt's niece; her disappear...

  14. Luba S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Luba S., who was born in Pruz?h?any, Poland (presently Belarus) in 1921, one of three children. She recounts her father's death when she was a young child, their poverty; attending a Jewish school until grade seven; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; antisemitic violence; her brother serving in the Polish military when war began in 1939; Soviet occupation; German invasion in 1941; ghettoziation; assistance from a non-Jewish neighbor; deportation with her mother and sister to Auschwitz/Birkenau; remaining with her sister; slave labor; a former teacher sharing extra foo...

  15. Konrad S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Konrad S., who was born in Poland in 1940. He describes orphanage records which document that he was found abandoned in the Warsaw ghetto; being taken to an orphanage by a Polish policeman; and transfer to a convent orphanage outside of Warsaw. Mr. S. recalls staying in thirteen orphanages until he was eighteen; ostracizism and abuse by peers and staff, including some Catholic clergy; frequent hunger; inability to form emotional bonds; unsuccessfully seeking help; attending special education classes; working for a year, then being fired due to not having official docu...

  16. Lawrence L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lawrence L., a professor and prominent scholar of Holocaust literature and testimony, who was born in Bronx, New York in 1929. He recalls no knowledge of the Holocaust or the Nuremberg trials when they occurred; traveling to Europe in 1955 after completing his oral examinations at Harvard, focusing on American literature; visiting Dachau, including a gas chamber; having no context with which to understand the site, outside of minimal signage; reading Night and The Last of the Just to prepare a lecture for Yom Hashoah in the early 1960s, his first encounters with Holoc...

  17. Gladys H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gladys H., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1924. She recalls German invasion in September 1939; immediate anti-Jewish violence; expulsion from their home; ghettoization; forced labor in a shoe factory; deportation with her parents and younger sister to Auschwitz in August 1944; separation from her father (she never saw him again); selection with her mother and sister for transfer to Bremen; slave labor clearing Allied bombing debris; her sister's serious illness; escaping briefly to obtain medication for her; assistance from a local pharmacist; transfer to Bergen-Be...

  18. Yoseph M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Yoseph M., who was born in Sremska Mitrovica, Yugoslavia (presently Serbia) in 1922, one of six children. He recounts his father's mobilization two days before German invasion in April 1941; Ustaša severely beating him and his brother; German soldiers billeting in their house; a German protecting them from Ustaša; his father's arrest; futile attempts to secure his release; arrest with his brother by Ustaša; their transfer to a prison in Zagreb, then to Jadovno and Gospić; slave labor harvesting wheat; transfer to Jasenovac; slave labor felling trees; Ustaša bruta...

  19. Irving D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Irving D., who was born in Russia in 1912. He recounts the family's move to Vilna in 1913; membership in Hashomer Hatzair; antisemitic incidents in 1929; moving to ?o?dz? to learn the textile industry; German invasion; fleeing to Warsaw; returning to ?o?dz? with his brother; their escape to Soviet occupied areas, Ma?kinia, then Baranavichy; registering to join his parents in Vilna which resulted in arrest as an anti-communist; incarceration in a forced labor camp through 1940; moving to Tashkent; volunteering for the Soviet military in 1941; his discharge after being ...

  20. Sally H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sally H., who was born in Zwolen?, Poland in 1928. She describes the ghettoization of her city; ghetto life, including forced labor and the humiliation of the Jews in the ghetto; her detention, together with her two sisters, in slave labor camps in Skarz?ysko-Kamienna and Cze?stochowa, where they worked in ammunition factories; and postwar antisemitism in her home town. She also reflects on the reasons for her survival and the lasting effects and ever-present memories of her Holocaust experiences.