Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 4,001 to 4,020 of 4,487
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Rachel M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rachel M., who was born in Sighet, Romania in 1929, one of six children. She recalls Hungarian occupation; her father's service in a forced labor battalion; his return over a year later; ghettoization; non-Jewish neighbors bringing them food; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in summer 1944; separation from her family; finding her sister; volunteering for work; her sister's selection for transfer; trading with another set of sisters to remain together; their transfer to Christianstadt after seven weeks; improved conditions; slave labor in a munitions factory and her s...

  2. Shulamit L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Shulamit L., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1927. She recounts her family's poverty; attending public school; her parents' divorce; living with her mother; the Anschluss; anti-Jewish restrictions resulting in expulsion from school; participating in a Zionist youth group; her father's remarriage; Kristallnacht; her father's emigration to the United States; her emigration with other children via Trieste to Palestine in 1940; receiving a postcard from her mother in Theresienstadt; living with a family in Jerusalem, then at a children's village; learning after the war...

  3. Miriam T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Miriam T., who was born in Znojmo, Czechoslovakia in 1924, the older of two sisters. She recounts living in Pohořelice; attending Czech public school; her mother's illness in 1931; wonderful visits to her maternal grandmother; participating in Makabi ha-tsaʻir; her mother's death in 1936; attending boarding school in Brno; fleeing with her father to Luhačovice two days prior to the German invasion; returning to school in Brno; anti-Jewish restrictions, including her expulsion from school; participating in hachsharahs in Mělník, Prague, and another town; a brief fa...

  4. Vincent Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Vincent Z., who served with the United States Army in World War II. He recounts speaking fluent Polish; deployment to London; working in a press unit publishing Polish newspapers; contacts with the Polish government-in-exile and Polish resistants; transfer to Paris, then to Germany; visiting Dachau in November 1945; observing the gas chambers and crematorium; speaking with a Catholic priest and other liberated prisoners; working with UNRRA in Bad Nauheim to publish newspapers for the displaced persons camps; and assisting with displaced persons camp education programs...

  5. Dora Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Dora Z., who was born in P?on?sk, Poland in 1921. She recalls chaos as the war began; anti-Jewish restrictions; ghettoization; frequent atrocities; seeing her parents for the last time when they were evacuated from the ghetto; and deportation with her three sisters to Auschwitz in 1942. Mrs. Z. describes the arrival routine including shaving and tattooing; meaningless forced labor; supporting each other during selections; the deaths of her sisters; friendships with other prisoners; new arrivals being herded to the gas chambers; the pervasive stench and smoke from the ...

  6. Ervin S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ervin S., a twin, who was born in Topol̕čany, Slovakia in 1940. He recounts that his father had been a bank executive prior to Slovak anti-Jewish laws; his maternal grandfather supporting them; riding scooters with his twin brother; round-up by Germans on September 5, 1944, his worst memory seeing his father frightened and vulnerable; deportation to Sered; his father becoming part of the Jewish camp leadership; their transfer to Theresienstadt in December 1944; living together with his parents and brother; spending days in the Kinderheim; inadequate food and sanitati...

  7. Michael J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Michael J., who was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1907. He describes family life before World War I; the Bolshevik revolution in 1917; famine, civil war, and pogroms which followed the revolution; his family's escape to ?o?dz?, Poland in 1922; entering an engineering school of the Polish army in 1928; and working in his uncle's textile factory in ?o?dz? until he was drafted in August 1939. He recalls the German bombings; the Polish army's retreat to Modlin; his arrest and transfer to a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany with his fellow officers; transfer to a camp in Prenzlau...

  8. Israel Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Israel Z., who was born in S?omniki, Poland in 1922, the youngest of four children and only son. He recalls his family's affluence; their Hasidic orthodoxy; attending public school and cheder; antisemitic harassment; attending high school in Krako?w; German invasion; arrest with his father; transfer to Miecho?w; execution of his father and another man; burying them; returning home; his mother and sisters hiding with non-Jews, obtaining false papers, and living as non-Jews; deportation to Bierzano?w; death losing meaning for him; mass killings as reprisals for escape a...

  9. Philip P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Phillip P., who was born in approximately 1922 and served in the United States Army. He recounts military draft in 1942; deployment to England in 1943; arrival on Omaha Beach on D-Day; crossing through France into Germany; the Battle of the Bulge; liberating Leipzig, and a nearby camp; emaciated prisoners; many corpses; and moving south. He notes that prior to this, he had been skeptical when hearing about concentration camps, but realizing for what he had been fighting having liberated a camp. He shows photographs.

  10. Irving F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Irving F., who was born in Stepangorodok, Poland in 1915. He recalls his youth in an observant family; attending yeshiva in Baranowicze in 1932; returning there later to marry and live; the birth of a child in 1940; and a decrease in antisemitic acts after the Soviet occupation. He describes the German invasion; imposition of anti-Jewish measures; ghettoization and formation of the Judenrat; forced labor for Organisation Todt; and the disappearance of some 6,000 Jews in a March 1942 Aktion. Mr. F. tells of constructing hideouts for use during round-ups; the killing of...

  11. Ilsa C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ilsa C., who was born in Hamm, Germany in 1916 and raised in Geilenkirchen. She recounts a large, extended family, their strong German identity; cordial relations with non-Jews until Hitler came to power; attending Catholic school; studying in Aachen and Berlin; official hiding of overt antisemitism during the 1936 Olympics; meeting her future husband in Cologne; obtaining papers to emigrate to the United States; returning home for a few months; going to the railroad station with her family during Kristallnacht; traveling to Cologne; visiting her parents in Aachen (th...

  12. Sophie K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sophie K., who was born in Bursztyn, Poland (presently Ukraine), the second youngest of seven children. She recounts her mother's death when she was three; her father's death shortly before German invasion; forced labor; transfer to Bukachevtsy; her siblings and their families being deported or killed; transfer to Rohatyn; escaping by swimming across a river; a Polish couple informing her there were Jews in the woods; finding a man she knew (he was killed soon after), then her cousin; digging and living in a bunker; receiving food from a nearby farmer; liberation by S...

  13. Gertrud B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gertrud B., a Romani. She recalls childhood in Prussia, then Danzig; arrest and incarceration in a camp; deportation by cattle car to Auschwitz at age fifteen; the trauma of being tattooed; becoming ill; nine weeks in the infirmary; her sister feigning an injury to join her; being thrown on a pile of corpses; her sister retrieving and nursing her; her father playing music for the barrack elder; transfer to Flossenbürg after two years, then Graslitz; forced labor in a munitions factory; severe punishments and beatings (she shows her scars); liberation by United States...

  14. Hadassah C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hadassah C., who was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1939, the daughter of Polish immigrants. She recounts her maternal grandparents' emigration to Palestine in 1933; German invasion; being hidden with a family in Hengelo; her parents' clandestine visits; her mother determining she was being neglected; transfer to another family; attending church (she had not been told she was Jewish); a parade at liberation; her foster parents' fondness for her resulting in their reluctance to return her; returning to her parents; learning she was a Jew; her sister's birth in 1946;...

  15. Lothar R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lothar R., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1926. He recalls being shunned by non-Jewish children; the family move to Cernăuti in 1933; Soviet occupation; expropriation of their business; German invasion; ghettoization; a forced march to Mărculești, then Yampolʹ; a mass shooting by Romanian soldiers; living in the Bershadʹ ghetto from 1941 to 1944; his mother and father disappearing; moving with his sister to the Balta ghetto; forced labor; receiving food from a German soldier; surviving an execution by feigning death; hiding with his sister in an outhouse; their...

  16. Bernard R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rabbi Bernard R., who was born in Ti?a?chiv, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1924. He recalls his rabbinic family; attending yeshiva, then teaching there; Hungarian occupation; his father's deportation to Romania; hiding with his mother; briefly moving to Mukacheve; returning home when deportations started; moving to Oradea (Grosswardein); tutoring at a yeshiva; obtaining false papers to avoid deportation; German occupation in 1944; a futile attempt to enter Romania; building bunkers; ghettoization; working outside of the ghetto; brief detention; hiding in a bun...

  17. Harry C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Harry C., who was born in Poland in 1896, the youngest of three children. He recalls attending cheder in Sosnowiec; his older sisters' marriages; his parents' deaths; working in textiles; marriage; German invasion; his wife's deportation to Auschwitz; his deportation to Auschwitz; transfer to Blechhammer; slave labor "digging and chopping"; public hangings; Allied bombings; hospitalization; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to Katowice, then Sosnowiec; a month later leaving for Wroc?aw, then Munich; living in Fo?hrenwald displaced persons camp from 1945 to 1949; ...

  18. Suzanne R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Suzanne R., who was born in Hungary in 1924. Mrs. R. describes prewar life in the large Jewish community of Debrecen; the gradual encroachment of antisemitism, which reached its peak after the German occupation in 1944; the formation and liquidation of the Debrecen ghetto; and her deportation, with her family, to Auschwitz. She tells of her arrival at Auschwitz; the physical and psychological conditions there, where she worked in the kitchens; a brief reunion with her father; and her selection, with several female relatives, for the labor camp in Allendorf. In Allendo...

  19. Ralph W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ralph W., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1924. He recalls economic hardships when his father lost his job in 1935; living in a Jewish neighborhood; German invasion in 1939; two German soldiers severely beating his father; ghettoization; his parents' deportation to Chelmno in 1941 (he never saw them again); obtaining a privileged job as a factory cook with assistance from a family friend; transfer to factory labor in March 1944; volunteering for deportation in someone's place for extra food and clothing; transfer to Cze?stochowa; slave labor building a HASAG factory...

  20. Abraham O. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Abraham O., who was born in Bia?ystok, Poland, in 1914. He describes the German occupation of Bia?ystok; the ghettoization of Bia?ystok and the round-ups of Jews that began several weeks later; building bunkers to hide from the Germans; and the routine Aktions and selections that characterized life in the ghetto. He discusses the liquidation of the ghetto, when he and his family went into hiding in a bunker; the formation of a small ghetto around the bunker; and the development of community life within this ghetto despite the difficult conditions. Mr. O. also relates ...