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 49,021 to 49,040 of 58,933
Search result ordering

  1. William S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of William S., who was born in Krako?w, Poland in 1918, one of three children. He recounts attending public school; working repairing bicycles; antisemitic harassment; German invasion; fleeing east with his father, brother, and uncles; returning; meeting his future wife; forced labor cleaning streets; working instead of his father; slave labor in a factory; smuggling chickens into the ghetto; his parents' deportation (he never saw them again); his brother's and future mother-in-law's deportation; marriage; transfer to P?aszo?w; brief visits with his sister and wife; a fe...

  2. Georgette B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Georgette B., who was born in Paris, France in 1929. She tells of her parents' emigration from Poland in 1920; their Jewish, multilingual neighborhood; anti-Semitic incidents after the war began in 1939; her father's enlistment; German invasion; anti-Jewish measures; her father's arrest; his incarceration outside of Paris; cessation of letters from him; fleeing to Montfermeil; hiding with a French family; leaving her youngest sister with this family when they escaped to unoccupied France; her mother's difficulty due to her artificial leg; living in Luchons, Bruges and...

  3. Paul R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paul R., who was born in Nowy Sa?cz, Poland in 1920. He recalls apprenticeship to a tailor at age eleven; the family's move to Belgium in 1936; working as a tailor; poverty and unemployment; local prominence as a table tennis player; German invasion; table tennis matches with German officers; deportation to Dannes in 1942, then to Malines and Auschwitz; sadistic beatings; working as a tailor and in the Canada Kommando; emotional numbness including indifference to others; trading valuables found in clothes for food; witnessing SS put Zyklon B in gas chambers; punishmen...

  4. Betty C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Betty C., who was born in Berlin in 1910. She tells of her happy life in prewar Berlin and describes the rise of antisemitism in Germany, culminating in Kristallnacht, after which she, her husband, and her infant daughter fled the country and emigrated to the United States.

  5. Elias C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Elias C., who was born in Golub-Dobrzyn?, Poland (then Russia) in 1917, one of four children. He recounts attending cheder and public school; moving to ?o?dz? in 1936; his father's death in 1938; military service beginning March 1939; assignment to artillery in Inowroc?aw; visiting his mother (he never saw her again); German invasion; surrender; non-Jewish, fellow POWs concealing he was Jewish from the Germans; imprisonment in Zdun?ska Wola; release; returning to ?o?dz?; traveling to Kutno, looking for his sister; returning to Dobrzyn?; forced evacuation; a futile att...

  6. T. C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of T. C. who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1922, the only child of a physician in a small village. She recounts her mother's death when she was five; being raised by her grandmother; cordial relations with non-Jews; attending a local Catholic school, then high school in Bratislava; expulsion from school in 1939 due to anti-Jewish laws; returning home; cruel treatment by Hlinka guards; deportation of the local Jews in 1942; their exemption due to her father's profession; losing her exemption when she was eighteen; a Catholic priest in Lysá pod Makytou hiding her for two ...

  7. Mikhail V. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mikhail V., who was born in Berdychiv, Ukraine in 1928, one of six children. He describes celebrating Jewish holidays; German invasion; ghettoization; his mother hiding him during a round-up; escaping from German soldiers who found him; running to a non-Jewish neighbor who hid him; learning his father had survived the mass killing (his mother and siblings were shot); living with skilled Jewish workers; hiding in the midst of a mass shooting; hearing the screams and shooting (his father was killed); escaping from a policeman who discovered him; hiding in a neighboring ...

  8. Eli W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eli W., who was born in the United States and grew up in a secular home, observing Jewish holidays. He recounts enlisting in the United States Army after Pearl Harbor; training as a tank officer; serving in the Third Army, 11th Armored Division; fighting under Patton in southern Europe and the Battle of the Bulge; capture near Malmedy; observing from a distance the Germans shooting all the American prisoners; immediately escaping; rejoining his unit; the pervasive stench when approaching Mauthausen; entering in the lead tank; shock at the condition of the prisoners; t...

  9. Mark M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mark M., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in approximately 1922, one of ten children. He recounts his parents' orthodoxy; attending school; working in his brother's commercial art studio; attending Betar meetings; participating in Maccabi; family vacations in Otwock; German invasion; his mother and brother being killed by German bombs; using identification papers of a non-Jewish friend who was killed; fleeing east; arrest on the Soviet border; brief imprisonment in Novosibirisk; deportation to a labor camp in Siberia; a brief reunion with his sister; transfer to Sumy; j...

  10. Yosef F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Yosef F., who was born in Iași, Romania in 1921, the older of two brothers. He recounts his elaborate bar mitzvah; cordial relations with non-Jews; summer vacations in Bukovina; visiting an uncle in Bucharest; antisemitism in the late 1930s; completing lyceum in 1940; teaching Latin; forced labor for the Romanian military; round-up with his family to the police station in 1941; his mother's release; deportation in crowded trains to Tîrgu Frumos; being beaten by a police officer; continuing to Stamora Română; jumping from the train en route to obtain water; sharing...

  11. Arieh K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Arieh K., who was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1928, the son of Polish émigrés and the older of two children. He recounts his family's move to Berlin in 1930; his father's rabbinical ordination and appointment as chief rabbi of Thessalonikē in 1933; going to his grandfather's funeral in Rzeszów in 1938; attending public school, the American high school, then a Greek private school; German invasion in April 1941; his father's arrest in Athens and imprisonment in Vienna; confiscation of their home and his father's library; his bar mitzvah in July; his father's return...

  12. Peter H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Peter H., who was born in 1920 in Hannover, Germany. He recounts his parents' divorce; being raised by a Catholic governess; his bar mitzvah; anti-Jewish laws; expulsion from school in 1936; apprenticeship in a Jewish-owned chemical factory; the factory's expropriation; losing his job; studying chemistry privately in Berlin; working as a chemist; Kristallnacht;, obtaining visas with his mother and brother at the American Consulate in Hamburg; visiting relatives in Cologne and Amsterdam; emigration to the United States in 1939; learning his father had emigrated to Thai...

  13. Bella H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Bella H., who was born in Bilky, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1924, one of seven children. She recounts a happy childhood despite her family's poverty; a large, extended family; attending Czech school; Hungarian occupation; her brother's draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion; deportation to the Berehovo ghetto, then to Auschwitz about five weeks later; remaining with her sister (she never saw her mother or younger brothers again); a brief encounter with her father, when she was beaten for running to him (she never saw him again); transfer to Boizenburg...

  14. Morris K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Morris K., who was born in Pruz?h?any, Poland. Mr. K. describes the Russian occupation, after which he was made the manager of a department store; the German occupation of Pruz?h?any; the Judenrat and confinement in a ghetto; and a confrontation between German officers and partisans which led to the liquidation of the ghetto and Mr. K's deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau. He details his injury during an enemy bombing and his subsequent narrow escape from the crematoria; the death march to Mauthausen; slave labor in Melk; his liberation from Ebensee; brief visits to Ger...

  15. Renee H. edited testimony

    From the point of view of the child that she was at the time, Renee H., a survivor of Bergen-Belsen from Bratislava, Slovakia relates her wartime experiences. She tells how, in German-occupied Bratislava, she served as the "ears" of her deaf parents and younger sister, alerting them to impending round-ups of Jews. She speaks of her vain attempts to find shelter for her sister and herself after the deportation of her parents, and her voluntary surrender to the police in the hopes of being reunited with her parents in Auschwitz. She describes the life that she and her sister led in Bergen-Bel...

  16. Gerald L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gerald L., who was born in Gumbinnen, Germany (now Gusev, Russia) in 1929. He recalls his parents' divorce; living with his father and stepmother; moving to Ko?nigsberg (Kaliningrad), then Danzig (Gdan?sk, Poland); emigrating with his father, stepmother, and other family members to Shanghai in July 1939; his father's death six months later; living with his stepmother among the Jewish refugees in a Chinese working-class district; financial support from his uncle's dental practice; attending a Jewish school (the center of his social life); Japanese occupation; confineme...

  17. Frank M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Frank M., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1911. He recalls his brother's emigration to France in 1926; antisemitic incidents while playing soccer; marriage in 1936; briefly visiting Algeria in 1936; the birth of twin daughters in April 1939; draft into the Polish army in August; German invasion; discharge in Zamos?c?; escape from a train in Kovel?; fleeing to L'viv in the Soviet zone; working in a bakery until 1941; German invasion; hiding with assistance from a Polish woman; using false papers; joining his family in the Warsaw ghetto in December 1941; shock at the ...

  18. Henry B., Sophie B., and Millie K., Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henry and Sophie B. and their daughter Millie K.. Mr. B. was born in Łódź, Poland in 1910. He recalls his mixed neighborhood; cordial relations with non-Jews; marriage in 1937; Millie's birth in 1938; German invasion in September 1939; fleeing with his brother to Soviet-occupied Vilnius, then Šiauliai; German invasion in 1941; exemption from ghettoization due to his job; receiving Ukrainian papers and a travel permit for him and his brother from his wife; reunion with his wife and daughter in Bochnia; moving to Kraków; obtaining a privileged position in communicat...

  19. Eve F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eve F., who was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1923. She recalls the prewar emigration to the United States of many members of her mother's family; her own identity as both German and Jew; the edict barring Jewish children from schools and the increasingly tense atmosphere in her own school; the belief held by many Jews that Hitler's antisemitism was temporary; and learning of the deportation of Communists to concentration camps as early as 1933. She relates emigrating with her family to New Orleans in December 1933; the assimilated life styles of her relatives...

  20. Juraj L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Juraj L., who was born in Spišská Nová Ves, Czechoslovakia in 1921. He recalls attending public school; moving to Lučenec in 1930; cordial relations with non-Jews; Hungarian occupation in 1938; returning to Spišská Nová Ves; being drafted for forced labor in the Sixth Slovak Brigade in Sabinov; training in Humenné; slave labor in Svätý Jur; using false documents and a Slovak army uniform provided by a guard to visit his family in 1942 (they were all deported shortly thereafter); improved conditions after transfer to Kralovany, then Banská Belá; smuggling e...