Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 301 to 320 of 816
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Eva G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva G., who was born in Oradea, Romania in 1923. She recalls her happy childhood in Bratislava; observing Jewish holidays; attending a German school; religious instruction by a Jewish teacher; German occupation in March 1939; harassment by Hitler Youth; transferring to business school; making corsets to support herself; antisemitic restrictions; avoiding round-ups when her home was quarantined because she had rubella; a warning of an imminent round-up; illegally traveling to Budapest in 1942; living with her uncle's family; denunciation as an illegal immigrant; deport...

  2. Charles T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Charles T., who was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1927. He tells of his mother's United States citizenship (she was born in Chicago); his family's affluence; attending a Jewish gymnasium; vacationing in Italy in summer 1938; traveling to Switzerland prior to returning home in October; his mother traveling to the U.S. on citizenship matters; German occupation; his father's and uncle's arrest in April; he and his younger brother living with relatives; spending seven months on a Zionist training farm; learning his father and uncle were in Dachau; an uncle in the U.S. a...

  3. Egon K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Egon K., who was born in Rathenow, Germany in 1918, the youngest of three sons. He recounts attending school; his father's prominent position in the Jewish community; anti-Jewish boycotts starting in 1933; training as an optician; anti-Jewish curriculum; the Nuremberg laws prohibiting him from taking his certification exam; his father's beating and arrest on Kristallnacht; fleeing to an aunt's home in Berlin; his middle brother's emigration to Palestine; his older brother's death from illness in 1939; emigration to Shanghai; organizing a Zionist youth group; deteriora...

  4. Evelyn E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Evelyn E., who was born in Poland in 1934. She recounts staying with her grandparents in Ostro?w Mazowiecka in 1939; German invasion; their escape to Zare?by Kos?cielne; deportation to a village by Soviet authorities; her grandfather's brief imprisonment; moving to Tashkent several years later; her grandfather's death from starvation; moving to a kolkhoz; placement in an orphanage; running away to return to her grandmother; their return to Tashkent; placement in another orphanage; attending school; their repatriation to Poland in 1946; living in orphanages in Otwock a...

  5. Genia K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Genia K., who was born in Kolyshki, Belarus in 1924. She recalls living with her grandmother while her parents worked on a collective farm; Soviet bans on religious observances; famine in 1933; studying medicine in Vitsebsk; German invasion in June 1941; returning home; her father's mobilization; ghettoization; mass killings which included relatives; forced labor; two non-Jewish families bringing them food; traveling east to Soviet territory with her aunt and her children; her aunt's hospitalization; bringing her food and assisting the children; her mother's and broth...

  6. Julianna L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Julianna L., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1927. In this exceptionally detailed testimony, she recalls a comfortable lifestyle; special privileges due to her father's distinguished service as an officer in World War I; Austrian Jews' disdain for Polish Jews; her family's inability to emigrate to Czechoslovakia after the Anschluss (her mother's family was Czech) due to German occupation of the Sudetenland; watching torchlight Nazi parades; and compulsory "Heil Hitler"'s in school. Mrs. L. remembers her father obtaining United States telephone books and writing let...

  7. Hugh J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hugh J., who was born in Leicester, England in 1916. He relates being a pacifist; assignment to agricultural work as a conscientious objector; volunteering for relief work with the Friends Service Committee; assignment to a team of twelve in continental Europe; driving a truck; being sent to Bergen-Belsen shortly after its liberation; shock at seeing corpses everywhere and the debilitated state of some prisoners; first bringing the children to a nearby hospital camp, then the other prisoners, the healthiest first since they had the best chance of surviving; driving hi...

  8. Nelly M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Nelly M., who was born deaf in Vienna, Austria in 1929. Mrs. F. describes her household comprised of her deaf uncle, mother, and younger sister, and her hearing grandmother; attending a school for the deaf at about age three; learning to read lips; and her mother's divorce (her father was deaf). She recalls the Nazi arrival in Vienna; being forced to leave school; teachers advising her mother to leave Austria; seeing signs in parks and movies reading "Jews forbidden"; an assault by a Nazi youth; witnessing the public humiliation of older Jewish men; learning to read E...

  9. Fela F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Fela F., who was born in Poland in 1923 and moved with her family to Brussels in 1926. She recounts her father's orthodoxy; a brief flight to France before German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; marriage in 1941; her parents and two siblings reporting for deportation in 1942 (she never saw them again); she and her husband hiding with non-Jews in Uccle, using false papers; receiving information from the people hiding them about smuggling herself to Switzerland; interment in a refugee camp in Switzerland; her husband being turned back when he followed her (she never...

  10. Ilse S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ilse S., who was born in Tempelhof, Germany in 1924. She recounts her assimilated family background; expulsion from public schools; joining the Hashomer Hatzair Zionist Youth Movement; anti-Jewish laws; seeing broken glass the morning after Kristallnacht; her father's decision to leave after a legal prohibition against Jews practicing medicine was passed; emigration with her family from Hamburg to Havana via Amsterdam in 1939; adjusting to life in Cuba; emigration to New York in 1940; joining Hashomer Hatzair; attending school; working at Hadassah; and her marriage to...

  11. John P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of John P., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1904. Mr. P. describes the atmosphere and political conditions in Vienna; prewar antisemitism; his family's desire to assimilate; his marriage in 1933; early observations of changing conditions; watching a boycott against Jews from a rooftop in 1938; his mother's refusal to leave because she was the widow of a World War I veteran, was married to another at that time, and was reluctant to leave her art collection; and his escape with his wife to Paris. He relates their incarceration in a French jail for one month; release and...

  12. Esther H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Esther H., who was born in Düsseldorf, Germany in 1927. She recounts her parents were Polish immigrants; seeing Hitler twice; anti-Jewish restrictions; visiting her grandparents in Poland in 1934; visiting an aunt in Berlin; her father being beaten and their home and store plundered on Kristallnacht; traveling to Antwerp via Aachen to live with a maternal aunt; her parents joining her; German invasion in May 1940; fleeing to Paris via Lille; assistance from the Joint; moving to Toulouse, then Saint-Loup; French soldiers being billeted in the house where they were st...

  13. Alice M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alice M., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1928. She recollects a strong Jewish influence in her childhood; the enthusiastic welcome for German troops in March 1938; anti-Jewish restrictions; an uncle in Venezuela who arranged for their family to go to Trinidad; SS men coming to their home in the middle of the night on Kristallnacht, kicking her father down the stairs and arresting him; her mother arranging for his release; their departure on November 20th; and her confusion and fright. Mrs. M. tells of travel to Amsterdam, then to Trinidad; help received from the s...

  14. Joseph W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph W., who was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1914. He recalls his parents' grocery business; their separation in 1931 (his father moved to Romania); celebrating religious holidays; attending business school; his belief that Nazi antisemitism would pass; Stuttgart's liberal atmosphere; exemption from wearing the yellow star due to his mother's Romanian citizenship; losing his job due to anti-Jewish laws; destruction of his mother's store during Kristallnacht; moving with his mother and sister into Jewish housing; working in a Jewish center processing emigration app...

  15. Jerry W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jerry W., who was born in Landsberg am Lech, Germany in 1927. He recounts his mother's divorce and remarriage; living with his grandmother; his beloved dog's disappearance, then finding a box at his door with the dog's corpse and an antisemitic note; expulsion from school; attending a girls' convent school (he was the only boy); having to leave when officials learned he was there; attending a Jewish boarding school in Coburg; being forced to shine a German officer's shoes and carry books to a fire on Kristallnacht; emigration with his mother and stepfather to the Unit...

  16. Le?on K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Le?on K., who was born in Lotte, Germany in 1911. He recalls moving to Paris in 1933; difficulties with his citizenship status starting in 1934; enlisting in the French military in 1941; German invasion; returning to Paris after the armistice; deportation to Pithiviers in May; playing chess and sharing food packages among his group; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in June 1942; slave labor doing various jobs; public hangings; assistance from a prisoner-doctor when he was ill; observing corpses everywhere; a death march, then train transport to Ebensee; transfer to M...

  17. Otto F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Otto F., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1903. He remembers cordial relations with non-Jews; his legal career; a professional relationship with Arthur Seyss-Inquart; marriage in 1929; anti-Jewish restrictions after German annexation forbidding him to practice law; soldiers forcing him to clean floors simply to humiliate Jews; his sisters' emigration to England; acquiring U.S. visas through his wife's family; a non-Jewish friend obtaining official statements certifying them free from tax obligations, which allowed them to leave; a painful departure from their parent...

  18. Manfred S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Manfred S., who was born in Josbach, Germany in 1924. He describes his family's long history there; his father's death in 1929; cordial relations with non-Jews until the rise of Nazism; his mother arranging his emigration to the United States in 1938 and his brother's to Palestine six months later; traveling by himself from Hamburg to New York; living with his aunt in Chicago; corresponding with his mother until 1941; being drafted into the United States Army in March 1943; participating in the liberation of Holland and the Battle of the Bulge; translating documents f...

  19. Herman B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Herman B., who was born in Beuthen, Germany in 1909. He recalls the family's move to Berlin in 1918; their great affluence; his father's significant art collection (sold in 1931); attending opera, concerts, and other cultural events; one sister's emigration in 1933; appointment as a judge due to his high standing in law school; dismissal due to the Nuremberg laws; moving to Bordeaux, then Paris; returning to Germany due to his father's illness; his emigration to the United States in 1936 (his other sister also subsequently left); his parents' refusal to leave; marriag...

  20. Valerie S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Valerie S., who was born in Hungary in 1898. She recounts her family's move to Vienna when she was four; a wonderful childhood and schooling in an affluent home; very close relationships with her mother and sister; marriage in 1923; working as a typist for her husband's anti-Nazi newspaper; fleeing to Budapest with her husband after the Anschluss; learning of her father's arrest from her mother's letters (they were later deported and she never saw them again); fleeing to Paris in 1939 with her husband; his death in January; German occupation; returning to Budapest in ...