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Displaying items 4,121 to 4,140 of 4,487
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Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. William M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of William M., who was born in Cherniyev, Poland in 1925. He recalls a strict, Orthodox family life; extreme poverty; pervasive antisemitism; Soviet, Hungarian, and German occupations; forced transfer to the Stanislav ghetto; hanging of Jewish police, including his brother, for not delivering a required number of Jews; forced labor on a farm; smuggling stolen food to his family; digging graves for a mass killing, which he witnessed; obtaining a Polish birth certificate; escaping from the ghetto; traveling to Ozeri?a?ny, posing as a Pole; working for farmers; attending ch...

  2. Martin F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Martin F., who was born in a small town in Poland in 1920. Mr. F. describes his childhood in Be?dzin; his involvement in Zionist youth organizations; his stay on a kibbutz near the Russian border until the outbreak of the war; and his unsuccessful attempt to escape to Palestine via Russia. He relates being sent from Be?dzin to Germany as a slave laborer; the typhus epidemic at Faulbruck/Gra?ditz where he, his father, and his brother were among the few survivors; and his transfer to Langenbielau, then to Gross Rosen. He speaks of his hatred and desire for revenge as a ...

  3. Moshe S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Moshe S., a twin, who was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1929. He recounts his mother's dental practice; his family's affluence; attending a Hebrew school; summering in Kulautuva; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; Soviet occupation; compulsory membership in Komsomol; German invasion in June 1941; ghettoization; round-up of his father, uncle, and grandmother (they never saw them again); working as a carpenter and handyman; his mother hiding him and his twin brother during round-ups; his and his mother's assignments to factory slave labor; his mother treating patients; t...

  4. Emile V. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Emile V., a non-Jew, who was born in Lanaye, Belgium in 1922. He recalls attending school in Liège and Tilff; receiving draft notification in May 1940; being sent to Paris; returning to Belgium three months later; organizing a resistance unit; noting German convoys and conveying that information to the resistance; working in Germany; returning to Belgium; arrest with his father on May 15, 1943 as spies; imprisonment in Liège, then Bochum; transfer to Esterwegen; no communication with the outside due to their "Nacht und Nebel" status (their clothing was marked "NN");...

  5. Anna S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anna S., who was born in Podkamen?, Poland (presently Ukraine) in 1923, one of eight children. She recalls attending school; Soviet occupation; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; joining her boyfriend to work on a village mayor's farm; hiding in the woods with her father, brothers, boyfriend, and other relatives; digging a bunker for the winter; their discovery; building another bunker in a different location; working for farmers in the spring; building another bunker; becoming ill; her brother leaving to obtain medication; announcing when he returned that the...

  6. Pearl F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Pearl F., who was born in Cerna?ut?i, Romania (formerly Czernowitz, Bukovina) in 1920. She recalls her family's orthodoxy; two older sisters emigrating to the United States and her brother to South America; increasing antisemitism; being left alone with her parents when her sister left for New York in 1937; graduating from high school in 1938; attending university; responding to growing antisemitism by forming close bonds among Jewish friends, including Paul Celan; the outbreak of war; harsh conditions under Soviet occupation; German invasion in June 1941; burning and...

  7. Henry B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henry B., who was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1926. Mr. B. recalls his father's reluctance to emigrate; seizure of the family business in 1938; attempts to leave in 1940; forced labor; a "crazy" Polish Jew who recounted atrocities; food parcels received from the chauffeur of a Nazi politician; arrest in January 1943; transport to Birkenau; selection; an SS officer allowing his father to remain with him and his brother; transfer to Auschwitz, then Jawischowitz; arduous conditions in the coal mine; becoming friends with members of the communist underground; his father's...

  8. Lilly G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lilly G., who was born in Sa?toraljau?jhely, Hungary in 1923. She recalls attending a Jewish school; her family's orthodoxy; her brothers' draft into Hungarian slave labor battalions; one brother feigning insanity to evade service; visiting him in Budapest; German invasion in March 1944; ghettoization; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation from her mother and younger sister (she never saw them again); remaining with her sister and her future husband's mother; transfer to Dachau; hospitalization; her sister singing to her; friends hiding her since she was too s...

  9. Mikhael K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mikhael K., who was born in Rokitnoye, Ukraine in 1925. He recalls Soviet antisemitism prior to the war; evacuating with his family to Kazakhstan after the German bombing of Kiev in June 1941; his brother's service in the Soviet military (he was killed in 1942); starvation conditions while working on a collective farm; entering the Soviet military at the end of 1942; serving at the front; being wounded in March 1944; a six-month recovery; gradually learning of the destruction of Jews; joining his family in Kazakhstan; their return to Rokitnoye in October 1944; enterin...

  10. Shalom S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Shalom S., who was born in Kovno, Lithuania in 1920. He discusses the prewar situation of the Jews in Lithuania, including Lithuanian antisemitism; the Russian occupation from 1939 to 1941; the German occupation; his flight with a small group to Russia; and the death of two of his brothers on the way home. He speaks of the collaboration of Lithuanian "partisans" with the Nazis in the round-up of Jews; the establishment of the Kovno ghetto; daily killings and other aspects of life in the ghetto; and the "Great Aktion" in which all the Jews were assembled for deportatio...

  11. Walter G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Walter G., who was born in Berlichingen, Germany, in 1924. Mr. G. recalls prewar life based on mutual respect between Jews and Catholics in his "conservative" village; the first antisemitic incidents in 1937; having to leave public school and attend a Jewish one in an orphanage near Stuttgart; Kristallnacht, when he and others at the school were beaten and Torahs burned; and returning home to care for his family's business when his father was briefly interned in 1939. He recounts coming to the United States to join his sister in May 1939; his parents arrival in Septem...

  12. Clementine U. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Clementine U., a Catholic, who was born in Hasselt, Belgium in 1914, the youngest of six children. She recalls working in an office from age sixteen to nineteen; marriage in 1924; the births of a daughter and son in 1936 and 1937; her husband's mobilization in 1940; German invasion; fleeing with her family to Harelbeke; returning home; her husband's return; his immediate work for the resistance; traveling to Brussels to obtain resistance flyers; working with a network to shelter Allied pilots and send them forward; obtaining ration cards and identity papers for them; ...

  13. Walter P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Walter P., who was born in Erlangen, Germany in 1926. He recalls his family moving to Berlin in 1933; attending public school until his expulsion as a Jew; attending a Jewish school; destruction of the store where his father worked on Kristallnacht; moving into a one-room apartment after his father lost his job; the outbreak of war; avoiding round-ups with the help of a friendly policeman; his bar mitzvah in 1940; his fear and humiliation after the introduction of the Jewish star in September 1941; learning Spanish and English in school in preparation for emigration; ...

  14. Paul S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paul S., who was born in Witten, Germany in 1925 of a Jewish father and Christian mother, who converted to Judaism. He recalls participation in Zionist organizations; one brother's emigration to Palestine; being hidden by non-Jewish neighbors on Kristallnacht; his father's imprisonment in Sachsenhausen; living with his non-Jewish aunt in Berlin; attending school in Dortmund; living at Zionist, then labor camps from 1940 onward; his older brother's death in an aborted attempt to reach Palestine; avoiding deportation because he was a "mischling"; deciding to live "under...

  15. Philip H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Philip H., who was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1922. He describes a violent childhood in a poor Jewish neighborhood in Chicago, and vividly recalls the isolated experiences of love and kindness which proved crucial to his later outlook and conduct. He also discusses the dissolution of his mystical view of the unity of all life, as represented by the "Shema", after witnessing the devastation of Mannheim during World War II. Professor H. documents how his study of cruelty and evil eventually focused on the Holocaust, and how his discovery of goodness in its midst, exem...

  16. Lea A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lea A., who was born in Yelizavetgrad, Russia (now Kirovograd) in 1906. She describes fleeing the revolution for Poland, then Danzig in 1921; anti-Jewish actions; emigration to Brussels to attend university in 1934; one brother's emigration to Palestine in 1935; her father's death in 1935; her mother, sister, and brother joining her; and the absence of discrimination. She recalls marriage; the birth of a child in 1938 (who died six weeks later); the German invasion; anti-Jewish legislation; her mother and siblings' escape to southern France (they survived); an escape ...

  17. Leon B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leon B., who was born in approximately 1917. He recounts the German invasion in 1939; fleeing with his brother to L?viv in the Soviet zone; working in coal mines in the Donets region; escaping to Kiev; involuntary transport to Siberia in 1940 for forced labor; escaping to Ternopil?, then L?viv; German invasion in 1941; forced labor; acquiring false papers from a Pole; traveling with his brother and cousin to Wolbrom in late 1941; briefly hiding in a bunker; incarceration with his brother in Stalowa Wola in 1942 for almost two years; capture during an escape attempt; t...

  18. Ingeborg W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ingeborg W., who was born in Hannover, Germany in 1923. She recalls increasing antisemitism; expulsion with her parents and younger sister to Zba?szyn? in October 1938 because her father was a Polish citizen; assistance from Polish Jews; living with an aunt in Kalisz; forced transfer to Krako?w, then Szczerco?w; smuggling themselves to Warta; imprisonment in Szczerco?w; ghettoization in Warta; a public hanging of Jewish community leaders; separation from her mother and sister at a selection (she never saw them again); transfer with her father to the ?o?dz? ghetto; for...

  19. Walter M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Walter M., who was born in Spišská Nová Ves, Czechoslovakia in 1930, one of six brothers. He recounts posing as a non-Jew successfully due to his "Aryan" appearance; working for a German officer; obtaining food for his family; his father's arrest in 1944; seeking assistance from the officer; his positive response despite learning Walter M. was Jewish; taking food to his father; learning one of his brothers had died; his father's release for the mourning period; round-up with his parents; their transfer to a prison in Prešov, then deportation to Auschwitz three day...

  20. Joseph A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph A., who was born in Poland in 1921. He recalls moving to Radom in the late 1920s; pervasive antisemitism; becoming a tinsmith; discussions with Jews fleeing from Germany; German invasion; round-up of Jews for forced labor; ghettoization; forced labor in a munitions factory; liquidation of the small ghetto in 1942; mass killings; having to bury the dead in mass graves; frequent selections; a forced march to Krako?w in summer 1944; train transport to Auschwitz; transfer to Vaihingen an der Enz; harsh conditions and brutal guards; witnessing cannibalism by Russian...