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 621 to 640 of 4,487
Search result ordering
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Claude L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Claude L., who was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1920, the youngest of three children. She recounts her assimilated family; studying with private tutors, then in public school; a close relationship with her nanny; her father's death in 1933; learning she was Jewish from her brother; graduating from university; vacationing in Greece with her brother; German invasion in May 1940; her brother warning them to escape; fleeing with her mother and nanny to Paris; living in Argenton; assistance from family friends; being wounded in a German bombing; hospitalization and surgery...

  2. Helen R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Helen R., who was born in Lwo?w, Poland (L'viv, Ukraine) in 1938. She recounts her father's death in 1939; her mother throwing her over a ghetto fence, then climbing over to escape in 1941; her mother acquiring false papers; witnessing her mother's interrogation when she worked as a cook for the German military; being hidden with a farmer; receiving food packages from her mother; being moved to a convent; reunion with her mother after liberation in early 1945; living in Tarno?w and Krako?w, then Frankfurt and Vienna; her mother's remarriage; emigrating to the United S...

  3. Jacob and Mira B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jacob B., who was born in Piotrko?w, Poland, in 1922 and his wife Mira B., who was born in Sosnowiec in 1925. Mrs. B. describes her happy childhood; her religious education and participation in Zionist organizations; the panic during the German occupation; and her deportation, with her sister, to a labor camp. Mr. B. recalls his childhood education; relations with non-Jews; being sent from Da?browa to Piotrko?w during the German invasion; widespread violence and looting; and his deportation and experiences in numerous labor camps including Anhalt, Marksta?dt, Ludwigsd...

  4. Saul K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Saul K., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1927 and brought up in two small villages. He recalls German invasion; moving to ?o?dz?; ghettoization; overcrowding, extreme hunger, and deportations; his aunt's six young children starving to death; his father volunteering for forced labor in Germany in 1941, hoping to provide resources for the family; receiving money and packages from him for a short time; and deportation to Birkenau when the ghetto was liquidated in 1944. Mr. K. recounts transfer to Auschwitz after three weeks; assisting a Polish block leader prepare food...

  5. Sarah P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sarah P., who was born in Košice, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1927, one of two children in a secular family. She recounts living in Liberec from 1933 to 1938; returning to Košice; Hungarian occupation; her father's draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion; a Hungarian friend offering to hide her and her mother; refusing since her mother would not leave her son and Ms. P. would not leave her mother; round-up to a brick factory in spring 1944; non-Jews bringing them food; deportation two weeks later to Birkenau; separation from her mother and brother; a...

  6. Harry M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Harry M., who was born, one of five children, in a small town in the province of Kielce, Poland, in 1925. Mr. M. remembers the constant antisemitism during his childhood; the German occupation of 1939; the brutality of the German soldiers; the deportations; the murder of his parents; his deportation to P?aszo?w, where he was a slave laborer; his two successful escapes from P?aszo?w; his return to the camp due to conditions outside; and his transfer to Flossenbu?rg in 1943 and Dachau in 1944. He also describes several incidents within the camps; the death march from Da...

  7. Morris F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Morris F., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1918. He recalls a serious illness and hospitalization; waking up deaf; becoming very depressed; not being able to attend school;living; moving to Tel Aviv with his family; returning to Łódź due to harsh conditions; fear after German invasion; ghettoization; forced labor as a tailor; his parents not returning home; separation from his brothers (he never saw them again); deportation to Auschwitz; hiding his deafness; responding to vibrations and following others; slave labor on farms; transfer to Dachau; liberation from a ...

  8. Elsa K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Elsa K., who was born in Stettin, Germany (presently Szczecin, Poland) in 1906, one of four children. She recalls moving to Insterburg (presently Cherni?a?khovsk); fleeing to Stettin during the first World War; her father's and other relatives' military service; returning to Insterburg a year later; active participation in a Zionist group; working in her parents' shoe store; marriage in 1929; the births of three children; her father's death in 1934; her siblings emigrating to the United States and Brazil; antisemitic harassment and boycotts; forced sale of the shoe st...

  9. Robert B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Robert B., who was born in Budapest, Hungary, an only child. He recalls his large, close extended family; living with his mother; attending a secular school; adoption by a paternal uncle; his uncles and mother apprenticing him as a car mechanic; working in a garage; draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion in about 1943; transport to a munitions factory; assignment to the garage; receiving a permit to visit home; assignment to another camp; slave labor digging trenches; a three-week visit to Budapest; inhuman slave labor pulling a floating bridge in early 1944; be...

  10. Joseph M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph M., who was born in New York City in 1925. He describes his service in the United States Third Army, 179th Engineer Combat Battalion which liberated Ebensee concentration camp on May 9, 1945. Mr. M. recalls the scenic beauty of the Ebensee locale; his unit's entry into the camp; and the soldiers' shock at the conditions they found. He tells of the crematoria and barracks; talking with the prisoners; and taking pictures of the camp and inmates. He reflects on the impact of the event on himself and his comrades; their inability to convey their feelings about it t...

  11. Ann F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ann F., who was born in Panevėžys, Lithuania in 1918, one of ten children. She recalls her family's orthodoxy; her father's charitable giving; antisemitic violence; two older brothers emigrating to South Africa; joining a married sister in Kaunas; Soviet occupation; marriage to a cellist in February 1940; her daughter's birth; German invasion; mass killings by Lithuanians, then Germans; ghettoization; an abortion in 1942 since Jewish women were forbidden to bear children; a non-Jewish neighbor hiding them during a round-up; starvation; deportations of many relatives...

  12. Rahela R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rahela R., who was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1926. She recalls her mother's death in 1934; cordial relations with non-Jews; participating in the Zionist group Akiba; learning Eastern Orthodoxy ritual and prayer in school, which later helped her pose as a non-Jew; German invasion; visiting her brother and two uncles at Topovske Šupe; her brother's warning that they should hide; watching her brother being taken away; his murder, with three hundred other Jews, in reprisal for a German who was killed; hiding in Arandelovac; obtaining false papers; receiving travel ...

  13. Rosita K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rosita K., who was born in Cluj, Romania. She speaks of the ghetto of Cluj, where she lived for four weeks; her deportation to Auschwitz; daily life in Auschwitz; her work as a slave laborer; the kindness shown her by a Wehrmacht soldier; her transfer to Bergen-Belsen where she was liberated by the British; her postwar stay in Sweden before emigrating to the United States; and the lasting detrimental effects of her wartime experiences.

  14. Zisha S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Zisha S., who was born in Poland in 1928. He recounts attending local public school with his twin brother; antisemitic harassment; transfer to the school in Gorlice; attending cheder; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions, including closing the school; his bar mitzvah; forced relocation with his family to Biecz; hiding with his parents and sister during a round-up in 1942 (his twin brother was taken); mass shooting of Jews; their escape to the forest; encountering his grandfather and aunt; discovery by Germans; deportation with his father to Prokocim (he never saw...

  15. Robert B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Robert B., who was born in Grodno, Poland (presently Hrodna, Belarus) in 1928. He recalls his father's conscription into the Polish Army in 1939 (he became a war prisoner in the Soviet Union); German invasion in June 1941; ghettoization in the fall; substituting for his brother for forced labor in Kielbasin; deportation with the last transport from Grodno to Birkenau in 1943; separation from his family, who were selected for death; working as a barber; watching people walk to the gas chambers; hearing shots during the Sonderkommando uprising; helping dismantle the cre...

  16. Dori K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Dori K., who was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1939. Ms. K. relates her family's move to Brussels after Hitler's rise to power; her father's arrest and disappearance in 1942; hiding with her mother in her uncle's home for six months; and being sent alone to a small village to stay with a family of Catholic farmers for two years. She tells of staying briefly with her mother, then being sent to an orphanage outside Brussels, where she was very unhappy. She describes her postwar reunion with her mother, who at first failed to recognize her; their emigration to the United S...

  17. Rose C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rose C., who was born in Zamos?c?, Poland in 1931. She describes her childhood; German occupation followed by Soviet occupation then German reoccupation; her family's move to Izbica; having to wear the yellow star; her father's conscription for forced labor in another town; his return; and joining her mother's family. She recalls her grandmother's disappearance; wandering with her family to avoid German capture; her separation from them; and placement as a maid in a Polish household. She recalls returning to Izbica and finding her family; a round-up and massacre; her ...

  18. Mala K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mala K., who was born in Chrzano?w, Poland in 1924. She recalls a close extended family; her father's death in 1938; German invasion; ghettoization; forced labor in a military uniform factory; a cousin pulling her from one side to the other during a selection; deportation with her cousin and sister to Oberalstadt; a foreman giving her cake; slave labor in a factory, then digging tunnels; liberation by Soviet troops; returning home; learning an uncle had survived; living with him in Katowice; emigration to Israel in 1951; marriage; and emigration to Germany in 1953, th...

  19. Stella K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Stella K., who was born in Przemys?l, Poland in 1923. She recalls her happy, comfortable, and observant childhood; antisemitic attacks by children; attending public school; accompanying their maid to Catholic services; moving with her family to Krako?w; German invasion; ghettoization with her parents and sister outside Krako?w; her parents' deportation (she never saw them again); working as a nurse; transfer to P?aszo?w; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; selections; Polish civilian workers' indifference to the piles of bodies; transfer to Ravensbru?ck and Malchow; li...

  20. Eva K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva K., who was born in 1921 and lived in a town near Khust, Czechoslovakia. She tells of the Hungarian, then German occupation; the deportations and deaths of members of her family; and her own hiding, first on a farm, then with a friend of her father. She also speaks of her suicidal feelings during that time and of the difficulties she later encountered when she and her older sister went to Prague.