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 27,561 to 27,580 of 33,375
Search result ordering
Language of Description: English

  1. 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...

  2. 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...

  3. 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 ...

  4. 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...

  5. 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...

  6. 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.

  7. Trenton D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Trenton D., who served in the United States 11th Armored Division during World War II. He recounts enlisting in 1936; being stationed in Alaska; attending officer training school after Pearl Harbor; promotion to captain in 1944; deployment to England; fighting in France and the Battle of the Bulge; overtaking a column of prisoners near Linz guarded by German soldiers; prisoners killing disarmed German guards; entering Mauthausen days after its liberation; the pervasive stench; emaciated prisoners; piles of corpses; entering Gusen; transferring sick prisoners to Mautha...

  8. Hanka L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hanka L., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1925. She recalls her close, extended family; celebrating Jewish holidays; attending Jewish school; German invasion; Germans looting her parents' store; standing on the food line with her brother because they did not "look Jewish"; ghettoization; crowding, starvation, and frequent deaths; clandestine schools and cabarets (the black humor raised their spirits); forced factory labor; reciting the seder while hiding with her brother during a round-up for deportation; her father's and brother's deaths; volunteering with her moth...

  9. Lili G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lili G., who was born in Yasinya, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1928. She recalls an antisemitic teacher; friendly relations with Christians; Hungarian occupation; her father's and brothers' service in Hungarian forced labor battalions; hiding Polish refugees; German occupation; anti-Jewish measures; billeting of German soldiers in their home; her mother being beaten; their deportation to Ma?te?szalka; receiving food from Hungarians; a German soldier beating her grandfather; their deportation to Auschwitz; being told by a Jewish prisoner to say she was eightee...

  10. Esther K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Esther K., who was born in 1935 in Split, Yugoslavia. She describes the Jewish community; Italian occupation including parades and expulsion of Jews from public schools; an influx of refugees; a book burning and destruction of the synagogue in June 1942; denial of official responsibility by the Italian government; and rebuilding of the synagogue. Mrs. K. recounts Nazi occupation; her father, brother and oldest sister joining the partisans; being warned of a Nazi round-up by a non-Jewish friend; hiding with her mother and another sister in a mountain village for severa...

  11. Erna E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Erna E., who was born in Oświęcim, Poland in 1920. She recounts her large family's affluence; summering in mountain resorts; participating in Betar; Vladimir Jabotinsky staying at their home; antisemitic harassment beginning in 1933; one year of school in Myslowice; one brother serving in the Polish military; German invasion in 1939; fleeing with her family to Przeworsk; her father continuing to the Soviet zone; finding her brother in Kraków (he had been wounded); their return home; brief arrest with her sister by Soviets in Tarnów en route to find their father; r...

  12. Samson M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Samson M., who was born in Poland in 1913 to a Hasidic family of seven children. He recalls their poverty; joyous holiday celebrations; antisemitic harassment at school; apprenticeship as a shoemaker in Seitesz; moving to Krako?w; German invasion; escaping east with his brother; Germans overtaking them; staying in Izbica; Soviet troops arriving; their withdrawal; leaving with them; living in L?viv; finding two of his brothers there; volunteering to work in a Soviet coalmine; harsh conditions; escaping with a friend; traveling to Kiev, then L?viv; volunteering for labo...

  13. Andre T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Andre T., a non-Jew, who was born in Belgium in 1920, the older of two children. He recounts his "bourgeois" background; attending university; military draft in 1939; postings in Liège, then Brussels; German invasion in May 1940; brief capture; returning to Brussels; attempting to escape to England via France; arrest in Port-Vendres; transfer to Peripignan; being tried for having improper documents; release and immediate re-arrest; transfer to Argelès; escape with two friends; traveling to Limoux; obtaining false papers; returning to Brussels via Sète and Lille; jo...

  14. Simon B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Simon B., who was born in the Soviet Union (now Estonia) in 1920. He recounts his family's emigration to France in 1922; growing up in Courbevoie; his bar mitzvah; his mother's death in 1934; military draft in 1940; German invasion; demobilization; staying in a youth camp near Cluny for eight months; moving to Paris; arrest in August 1942; internment in Drancy; transfer to Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande, then back to Drancy; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in September 1942; hospitalization in December; assistance from a non-Jewish nurse; a privileged assignment in t...

  15. Alfred F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alfred F., who was born in Breslau, Germany (presently Wrocław, Poland) in 1920, the older of two siblings. He recounts his father's pro-German sentiments based on his military service in World War I; anti-Jewish laws resulting in his expulsion from school in 1934; attending a Jewish school; moving with his family to Berlin in 1935; participating in Hechalutz; attending their summer camp; hearing Martin Buber speak; non-Jewish neighbors hiding his family during Kristallnacht; his sister's emigration to England, then his to Wieringen, Netherlands with a hachsharah in M...

  16. Magdolina S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Magdolina S., who was born in Dunafo?ldva?r, Hungary in 1924. She recalls German occupation; cordial relations with German soldiers; fleeing with her mother to Pe?cs as Soviet troops advanced; help from a German officer (her future husband); fleeing, with his assistance, to Szombathely and Berlin; marriage; brief visits to Sachsenhausen and Oranienburg; living on a farm near Bergen-Belsen; observing barbed wire and towers, emaciated people marching to the railroad station, guards shooting those who couldn't walk and her inability to identify a strange odor; being forc...

  17. Josif V. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Josif V., who was born in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia in approximately 1928. He recalls cordial relations with non-Jews; Hungarian occupation; his father's draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion (he never saw him again); German invasion in March 1944; a round-up for a mass killing of both Jewish and Serbs by the Arrow Cross (Nyilas) which included him, his mother, and sisters; not being chosen; their release with others at the end of the day; their deportation to Subotica, Baja, then Auschwitz; separation from his mother and sisters (the oldest was selected for work); ...

  18. Eva and Carl S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva S., who was born in Debrecen, Hungary and her husband Carl S., who was born in Breslau, Germany. Mrs. S. describes her and her family's journey by cattle car to Auschwitz; her separation from her parents and younger brothers there, as well as her reunion with her sister; and her selection for a labor transport to a factory in Germany, where she was an interpreter. She also speaks of her evacuation to another camp and finally to Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated. She tells how, unable to locate any surviving family members in Hungary, she returned to Bergen-Be...

  19. Celia K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Celia K., who was born in Szarkowszczyzna, a small town near Vilna, Poland, in 1923. In this extraordinarily detailed and vivid testimony, Mrs. K. describes her prewar education; the German occupation; the ghettoization of her town; and her work there as a waitress in the officers' dining hall. She tells of her transfer to the Glubokoye ghetto; being tortured for refusing to become the mistress of a Kommandant, and the psychological effects of this experience; assisting others to flee the ghetto; and her own escape, with the aid of a Polish farmer. She relates spendin...

  20. Rivka K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rivka K., who was born in Rzeszów, Poland, in 1920, one of two children. She recounts her family's Zionism; attending Hebrew schools; participating in Zionist youth groups; her family's move to Kraków in 1933; attending a Hebrew gymnasium; participating in Ha-No'ar ha-Ivri-Akiba led by Yoel Dreiblatt; antisemitic harassment; working for Akiba in Warsaw; being sent to establish Akiba in Bydgoszcz, Skarżysko, and Starachowice; assisting German-Jewish refugees in Zbąszyń; returning to Kraków as a leader with Shimon Draenger, Adolf Liebeskind (Dolek) and others; eng...