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 1,321 to 1,340 of 4,487
Search result ordering
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Harry Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Harry Z., who was born in Zawiercie, Poland in 1919. He recalls growing up in a religious family, the fifth of eight children; his father's death when he was nine years old; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; German invasion; an unsuccessful attempt to flee; anti-Jewish measures; separation from his family when he was deported to Auenrode in October 1940 (he never saw them again); slave labor building roads; receiving packages from home until 1941; his experiences in Gross Sarne, Geppersdorf, and Klettendorf; liberation from Waldenburg by Soviet troops in April 1945; ...

  2. Saul H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Saul H., who was born in Thessalonike?, Greece in approximately 1925. He recalls German invasion in 1941; avoiding forced labor during a round-up in Independence Square; forced labor with his brother on the rail line to Athens; ghettoization in 1943; his family's deportation; escaping with his brother; hiding with a non-Jewish friend, then in the country; obtaining false papers; being caught; torture as partisans; incarceration in Haidari; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; his brother's escape en route; assignment to the Sonderkommando; burning bodies in outside pits...

  3. Hermina H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hermina H., who was born in Uz?h?horod, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) to a family of five daughters. She recalls her Hungarian, rather than Czech, sense of identity; beginning to work in 1938; Hungarian occupation; antisemitic laws; her father's death in 1939; German invasion in March 1944; ghettozation in a brick factory; deportation to Auschwitz in June; maneuvering to stay with three of her sisters; learning her mother and other family members had been gassed; starvation and selections; receiving clothes from her mother's cousin; transfer to Stutthof; being be...

  4. Beatrice S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Beatrice S., who was born in 1933 in a small town near Vilna, Poland (now Lithuania.) She recalls her prewar home life and schooling, and the Russian occupation in 1939. She relates her vivid memories of the German occupation in 1941 and the atrocities which followed, including the murder of her mother and two-year-old brother (which she and her father witnessed from their hiding place); her flight to relatives in another town; her escape with her father into the woods; and the 900 kilometer walk to the Russian front. She describes their journey to Siberia; her separa...

  5. Martha W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Martha W., who was born in the Netherlands in 1908. She recalls attending public and Hebrew schools in a small town; living in Paris in the spring of 1939 with her husband and baby; returning to Leiden, Netherlands from a vacation in Biarritz when the war started in September; returning to Paris in 1940; and re-establishing correspondence with her family after the German invasion in May. Mrs. W. describes escaping from Paris in May 1940; crossing to Oran, Algeria; traveling to Casablanca, Morocco; receiving affidavits from relatives in the United States; traveling via...

  6. Paul F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paul F., who was born in Cluj, Romania, in 1929. Mr. F. describes his family; lack of antisemitism in Cluj; Hungarian occupation of Transylvania; changed attitudes and behavior toward Jews; his family's exemption from deportation because his father was a state physician; their subsequent transfer to an area near Bras?ov, then to Sighis?oara; ghetto conditions; and the brutality of Hungarian collaborators. He tells of transport to Birkenau; separation from his mother; then transport to Buchenwald. He describes camp conditions; work as a bricklayer; and transfer with hi...

  8. Hanna S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hanna S., who was born in Be?dzin, Poland in 1923, the middle child of seven. She recalls attending Catholic school; cordial relations with non-Jews; one brother's service as an officer in the Polish military; German invasion in September 1939; anti-Jewish restrictions; deportation of her parents and oldest sister in 1942 (she never saw them again); hiding in a bunker in 1943; giving up after three days; deportation with her family to Annaberg; transfer to a labor camp with her next youngest sister; slave labor in a textile factory; their transfer to Gru?nberg; sharin...

  9. Simon D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Simon D., who was born in Vitebsk, Byelorussia in 1892. He recalls moving to ?o?dz? as a child; studying in Moscow; returning to ?o?dz? in 1923; marriage; working as an accountant for the Bund; increasing antisemitism from 1933 onward; German invasion; fleeing to Warsaw, then Bia?ystok (in the Soviet zone) with his son while his wife and daughter remained in ?o?dz?; working as a factory accountant in Orsha; and arranging for his wife and daughter to join them in December 1939. Mr. D. recounts his denunciation and arrest as a Bund member in 1941; interrogation and rele...

  10. Beba L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Beba L., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1925, the oldest of four children. She recalls her father's emphasis on Jewish education; attending private school; aspiring to a university education; Soviet occupation; German invasion in June 1941; anti-Jewish restrictions; hearing about mass killings at Ponary; ghettoization in September 1941; her father arranging her escape with assistance from a Polish officer; obtaining false papers; hiding on a farm; returning to the ghetto to be with her parents, although she never saw her family again; working for the Judenrat; witne...

  11. Jacques G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jacques G., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1920. He recalls his family's move to Paris when he was six months old; their poverty; apprenticeship at age eleven; marriage; military conscription in 1939; his daughter's birth in 1940; serving in Bordeaux; returning to Paris after the German invasion; anti-Jewish measures; traveling to Lyon, in the unoccupied zone, in 1941; bringing his wife and daughter there; compulsory work (Service du travail Obligatoire); arrest in 1943; release; obtaining false papers; joining the Maquis in Grenoble; various Resistance activities;...

  12. Joseph S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph S., who was born in M?awa, Poland in 1920. He recalls his family's move to Busko-Zdro?j in 1928, then Krako?w in 1931; membership in the Bund; distributing anti-German leaflets; German invasion; escaping to L'viv in the Soviet zone; German invasion in 1941; being injured during an anti-Jewish riot during which many Jews were killed; help from Polish nurses; obtaining permission to join his family in Cze?stochowa; a beating when he was identified as a Jew at the Krako?w railroad station; living with his family in the Cze?stochowa ghetto; deportation of his paren...

  13. Mayer Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mayer Z., who was born in Piotrko?w Trybunalski, Poland in 1912, one of five children in an impoverished family. He recalls working as a tailor from age eleven; living in ?o?dz?; starting a business with his brother-in-law in Piotrko?w; increasing antisemitism; German invasion; anti-Jewish regulations; escaping to the Soviet zone in December; encountering his wife in Brest; moving to Hantsavichy; arrest with his brother-in-law; imprisonment in Luninet?s? and Pinsk; deportation to a Soviet concentration camp; forced labor for a year; transfer to Solikamsk after German ...

  14. Frances S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Frances S., who was born in a small town in the Carpathian Mountains in 1925. She recounts her apprenticeship as a dressmaker in a larger city; Hungarian occupation in 1939; forced removal of able-bodied Jewish men; ghettoization in 1944; her father's refusal of an offer of hiding so they could remain with the Jewish community; the belief that a miracle would save them; walking with her family from the Khust ghetto to the train; separation from her family upon arrival at Auschwitz; assuming responsibility for four girls whom she helped to survive; working in a rubber ...

  15. Herta V. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Herta V., who was born in 1930. She recalls attending Jewish boarding school in Trnava; antisemitic violence by Slovak guardsmen; returning home; arrest with her brother and parents; their incarcerations in Sered; being released due to her father's connections; their move to Bratislava to live as non-Jews under false names; denunciation and arrest; incarceration in Sered;̕ organized theater and music groups; deportation to Birkenau; refusing to accompany her younger cousin through the selection; separation from her father, aunt, and cousins (she never saw them again);...

  16. Annette W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Annette W., a historian and research director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique, who was born in France in 1948, one of four children of Holocaust survivors. Ms. W. recounts her mother surviving in hiding and her father in Nice and Switzerland; the deportation and/or deaths of three of their parents and some of their siblings; her early Maoist sympathies; teaching in China from 1974 to 1976, which changed her mind; learning Yiddish at Columbia University in the early 1980s in order to do research on her grandfather, which led to her interest in Frenc...

  17. Edwarda P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Edwarda P., a Roman Catholic who was born in Zabkowice, Poland in 1926. She describes the annexation of her town by Germany; the removal of Polish intelligentsia to Dachau; and life under German occupation. She recounts the arrest of her family, including herself, in February 1943; her internment and interrogation at Auschwitz for two months; and her transfer to Birkenau in April 1943. She tells of daily camp life there; medical experiments on prisoners; divisions of inmates; and the gas chambers. She relates the death march from Auschwitz in January 1945; her transfe...

  18. Pearl G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Pearl G., who was born in Okrouhlic?ka, Czechoslovakia in 1924, one of seven children. She recalls her father's death in 1934; her oldest brother helping support them; their orthodoxy; Hungarian occupation; two brothers and her brother-in-law being drafted for slave labor (they never saw them again); expulsion from school; confiscation of their business; refusing to hide with her mother's non-Jewish friend, not wanting to leave her family; their deportation to the Ti?a?chiv ghetto; deportation four weeks later to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation from her mother, sister-...

  19. Peter B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Peter B., a Russian Orthodox, who was born in Terijoki, Finland (now Zelenogorsk, R.S.F.S.R.) in 1916. He relates his family's move to Russia after the 1917 Revolution; living in Poland approximately two years; joining his father in Paris in 1925; earning a degree in chemical engineering; volunteering at war's outbreak; attending officers' school; being wounded and captured by the Germans in June 1940; and escaping in July. He recalls being demobilized; working for the Germans to avoid capture; marriage; assisting in resistance activities through his wife and brother-...