Ernie M. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Ernie M., who was born in Cologne, Germany in 1916, one of three children. He recounts his father was an American citizen, thus he was as well; attending Jewish school; working as an auto mechanic; participation in Habonim; becoming a counselor at a Youth Aliyah camp outside of Berlin; police confiscating the identification papers of everyone there in November 1938; traveling to Berlin; arriving on Kristallnacht; observing Jews being beaten and synagogues burning; visiting a friend who had just been released from a concentration camp; returning to the youth camp; learning their United States citizenship had expired; a relative in the U.S. having it renewed; obtaining passports which were valid for six weeks; reluctance to leave his future wife who worked at the youth camp; brief retention with five colleagues by the Gestapo in Frankfurt an der Oder; his sister visiting them at the camp from Stockholm; his future wife traveling to Stockholm with his sister's husband, posing as his sister; meeting her there; marriage in March 1939; his emigration to the United States; obtaining papers for his wife; and her journey to New York via Moscow, Japan, and the west coast of the United States.
Extent and Medium
1 videocassette
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony can only be viewed at Yale by Yale faculty and/or students.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive. This testimony or excerpts from it cannot be used for publication.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- M., Ernie, -- 1916-
Corporate Bodies
- Jewish Agency for Israel. -- Youth Aliyah Department. -- Mador le-hadrakhah.
- Ichud Habonim.
Subjects
- Crystal Night, 1938.
- Jews -- Migration.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Kristallnacht, 1938.
- Husband and wife.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Video tapes.
- Men.
Places
- Stockholm (Sweden)
- Cologne (Germany)
- Germany.
- Frankfurt an der Oder (Germany)
- Berlin (Germany)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat