Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 1,821 to 1,840 of 4,487
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Ilse L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ilse L. who was born in Breslau, Germany in 1915. Mrs. L. recalls her sheltered childhood in a bourgeois family; her father's death when she was thirteen; expulsion from school in 1933; her uncle's desire for the children to leave Germany; finding a job in Hungary; joining her sister in Scheveningen, Netherlands in 1934 (her mother and brother also emigrated); her niece Renee's birth in 1937; German invasion in May 1940; anti-Jewish regulations; joining the resistance; hiding separately, with family or resistance members in Amsterdam, Bilthoven, Apeldoorn and Loosdrec...

  2. Egon K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Egon K., who was born in Rathenow, Germany in 1918, the youngest of three sons. He recounts attending school; his father's prominent position in the Jewish community; anti-Jewish boycotts starting in 1933; training as an optician; anti-Jewish curriculum; the Nuremberg laws prohibiting him from taking his certification exam; his father's beating and arrest on Kristallnacht; fleeing to an aunt's home in Berlin; his middle brother's emigration to Palestine; his older brother's death from illness in 1939; emigration to Shanghai; organizing a Zionist youth group; deteriora...

  3. Lillian A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lillian A., who was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1925. Mrs. A. discusses her family history; prewar Berlin life; experiences of antisemitism during the rise of Nazism; relations with her parents and their attitudes towards Judaism; attending Jewish school; Kristallnacht; the impact of the Nuremberg laws; and departure for Cuba in 1940 with her parents, from where they later emigrated to the United States. Mrs. A. tells of her life in New York and assistance received from HIAS.

  4. Miriam E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Miriam E., who was born in Bełżyce, Poland in 1929, the youngest of three children. She recounts her family's poverty; their move to Lublin; attending three years of public school; visiting her aunt in Bełżyce; German invasion; observing Germans killing family friends; returning home four months later; her family escaping in Piaski during their forced relocation; living with a family friend; returning to Lublin days later; her parents returning her to her aunt in Bełżyce, thinking it safer (she never saw them again); in 1942, her uncle sending her and two cousins t...

  5. Joseph H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph H., a Catholic, who was born in Turnhout, Belgium in 1922. He recalls moving to Brussels after middle school; attending an elite Catholic school; German invasion; fleeing briefly to France; working for the Red Cross; meeting members of the Resistance; working as a resistance courier; arrest in May 1944; incarceration in Antwerp; transfer to Buchenwald, then shortly thereafter to Dora; working in the hospital where he could help many other prisoners; transfer to Ellrich; public hanging of a prisoner who had cannibalized a corpse; transfer to Oranienberg; evacuat...

  6. Andy F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Andy F., an American Catholic, who was in the 11th Armored Division during World War II. He recalls fighting in the Battle of the Bulge; traveling to Austria; the surrender of Linz; liberating Mauthausen; shock at the stench, the prisoners' condition (walking skeletons), and the pervasive filth; feeding the prisoners which resulted in some immediate deaths; calling for engineers to assist in burying thousands of corpses; and compelling the locals to assist in the burials (they denied knowledge of the camp, an impossibility). Mr. F. discusses losing his faith in God up...

  7. Roland H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Roland H., who was born in Paris, France in 1922. He describes his family's Alsatian roots; their strong French patriotism; studying in Marseille, Nantes, Bordeaux, Agen, and Lyon; joining the Resistance; hiding in Evian to avoid forced labor; joining a network which manufactured false papers; arrest in a Resistance office in Paris in March 1944; interrogations and torture in Fresnes prison; transfer to Drancy; return to Fresnes; and deportation to Auschwitz-Monowitz via Drancy. Mr. H. recalls minor surgery during a hospitalization; work in the chemical kommando; rela...

  8. Evelyn E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Evelyn E., who was born in Poland in 1934. She recounts staying with her grandparents in Ostro?w Mazowiecka in 1939; German invasion; their escape to Zare?by Kos?cielne; deportation to a village by Soviet authorities; her grandfather's brief imprisonment; moving to Tashkent several years later; her grandfather's death from starvation; moving to a kolkhoz; placement in an orphanage; running away to return to her grandmother; their return to Tashkent; placement in another orphanage; attending school; their repatriation to Poland in 1946; living in orphanages in Otwock a...

  9. Emmanuel R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Emmanuel R., who was born in Bardejov, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1921, one of five children. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; attending public school and cheder; antisemitic harassment; apprenticing at a lumber business; moving to Mizrachi training facilities in Michalovce, then Poprad, preparing for emigration to Palestine; conscription into the Sixth Slovak Brigade in October 1940; slave labor digging canals in Sva?ty? Jur, then in a brick factory near Bratislava; his family's evacuation to Z?ilina in 1944; visiting them briefly (he never saw his par...

  10. Max M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Max M., who was born in Neutitschein, Czechoslovakia (presently Nový Jičín) in 1920, the oldest of five children. He recalls attending business school; an apprenticeship in Brno; assisting Austrian Jews to escape; German occupation; returning home; destruction of the synagogue on Kristallnacht; his father's arrest; his release after promising to leave; the family's move to Ungarisch Brod (presently Uherský Brod) in January 1939; working with Romanies, one of whom he later encountered in Auschwitz/Birkenau; one brother's arrest; marriage in 1942; choosing not to em...

  11. Eva V. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva V., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1918. She recounts a great deal of family history; their assimilated lifestyle; visiting her grandparents in Nitra; completing school in 1936; joining a communist organization; moving with her parents to Nitra; marriage to a man from a wealthy orthodox family; anti-Jewish laws; her father's schoolmate, a priest, providing them with back-dated baptismal papers; confiscation of her father-in-law's business and home by the Hlinka guard; working as a domestic in King's Lynn, England in 1939, hoping an English cousin would assist ...

  12. Adrienne K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Adrienne K., who was born in Cluj, Romania in 1923. She recounts her childhood; anti-Semitic discrimination following the Hungarian occupation in 1940; and her attendance at medical school in Budapest from September 1943 until the German occupation in March 1944. She describes the jailing of the men of the family and the transport of the family to Auschwitz in July 1944. She relates her separation from her parents and sister, who did not survive; camp conditions; her job in the "Scheisskommando," carting away excrement; and the burning of the Zigeunerlager (Gypsy Lage...

  13. Magda E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Magda E., who was born in Satu Mare, Romania in 1925, one of six children. She recalls her family's orthodoxy; Hungarian occupation; her father's and brother's draft into Hungarian slave labor battalions; anti-Jewish restrictions in spring 1944, including wearing the star; ghettoization; deportation to Auschwitz; initially thinking they were in an insane asylum; separation from her mother and one sister (she never saw them again); slave labor; always remaining with her other three sisters and a friend; sharing extra food with her youngest sister; train transfer to Ber...

  14. Lusia S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lusia S., who was born in Minsk, Belarus in 1922, the oldest of three children. She recounts her family fleeing from the Bolsheviks to Vilnius when she was three months old; their relative affluence; attending a Yiddish gymnasium; her father's participation in the Bund; her mother transferring her to a Polish school; spending summers in Nemenčinė and Pabradė; participating in Hashomer Hatzair and Gordonyah; university studies in pharmacology; violent antisemitic harassment by Endecjas; Soviet occupation in September 1939; Akiva members living with them and becoming...

  15. Sophie I. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sophie I., who was born in Pidbuz︠h︡, Poland (presently Ukraine) in January 1939. She recounts her family's affluence; Soviet occupation the year of her birth; German invasion; her parents and aunt taking her to hide in the forests in the winter of 1942; wandering in the woods for six weeks, being carried by her mother or aunt; hiding in the barn of a large farm; the farmer, who knew her parents, finding them; his wife and five teenage children agreeing to hide them; meager food; hiding silently during frequent searches and visits by other Poles; lice infestation; bei...

  16. Isaac A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rabbi Isaac A., who was born in Galicia, Poland and grew up in the city of Drohobych. He speaks of the prevalence of antisemitism in Poland; the unwillingness of the Jews to perceive the Germans as dangerous; and his and his father's activities as rabbis and spiritual counselors in Boryslav/Drohobych after the German occupation. He details the miraculous survival of his father, who was protected by his fellow prisoners in Buchenwald because he was a rabbi; his own experiences in the P?aszo?w ghetto--slave labor in an oil refinery, hiding in a bunker, being caught and ...

  17. Josse L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Josse L., who was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1915 to Belgian parents, giving him dual citizenship. He recounts living in Argentina, Brussels, and Rio de Janeiro; attending school in Vanves, France; vacationing with relatives in Ostende; his bar mitzvah there; completing school in Brussels; military service in 1936; opening a business with his brother; military recall; capture by Germans on May 28, 1940 (the Germans did not learn he was Jewish); learning his parents and sister had left for Brazil; release on June 11; reunion with his brother; reopening their busine...

  18. Samuel P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Samuel P., who was born in Be?dzin, Poland in 1926, the third child of seven. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; especially enjoying Passover and Sukkot; cordial relations with non-Jews; participating in Gordonyah; his brother's bar mitzvah (German invasion precluded his); increasing anti-Jewish restrictions; confiscation of the family business; forced labor with his older brother; his brother's deportation; ghettoization; receiving extra food from his German supervisor; hiding in a bunker with his family during deportations; having to leave the bunker during the ghet...

  19. Cherna G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Cherna G., who was born in Z︠H︡ytomyr, Ukraine in 1927, one of five children. She recalls all her siblings dying during the famine; German invasion; her family fleeing to Staraya Kotelʹnya; encountering German troops; returning to Z︠H︡ytomyr; local police beating her grandparents, then killing her grandmother and three young cousins; hiding with her parents and other relatives; ghettoization; her mother's assignment for forced labor with one hundred Jewish women; learning they were killed in a mass shooting; escaping disguised as a Ukrainian; hiding with a non-Jewish ...

  20. Miriam W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Miriam W., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1923. She recalls her family's orthodoxy; attending Jewish school; antisemitic harassment; German-Jewish refugees arriving in 1938; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; her father's disappearance during a round-up in February 1940 (they never saw him again); ghettoization in March; obtaining a privileged job from Aron Jakubowicz, a Judenrat official; theater and symphony until 1941; pervasive starvation; deportation to Auschwitz in August 1944; separation upon arrival from her mother, older sister, and twin siblings (...