Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 141 to 160 of 4,487
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Leon Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leon Z., who was born in Poland. He speaks of the German takeover in 1941; daily incidents in the ghetto such as a massacre of fifty people in the town center while an orchestra was playing; and his escape from the ghetto and hiding in the woods with his brother to avoid a round-up for deportation. He relates his later transfer to a labor camp, where he was reunited with his brother; avoiding a selection in the camp by hiding in a barrel and being spared by the Nazi who found him there; his escape from the camp back to the ghetto; and his escape from the ghetto to joi...

  2. Sophia R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sophia R., who was born in L?viv, Ukraine in 1941. She recounts her father's incarceration in Janowska; her mother obtaining false papers from non-Jewish friends; living as non-Jews in Zimna Voda; her father's escape and her mother hiding him in their attic without her knowledge; his emergence and being told not to reveal his presence; her sister's birth; liberation by Soviet troops; returning to L'viv; his sister's death from whooping cough at about a year old; living in Paris for five years; learning she was Jewish; emigration to the United States; and surprise at m...

  3. Alexander B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alexander B., who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1925, the youngest of three children. He recounts attending a Jewish school through eighth grade; his father losing his business and their landlord forcing them to move due to antisemitism; round-up to Trnava in 1940; working as a non-Jew to support his family; deportation to Sered in fall 1941; beatings by the Hlinka guard; transfer to Majdanek; encountering a cousin and his brother-in-law; volunteering as a German translator; transfer to digging anti-tank trenches, then to Auschwitz/Bir...

  4. Zyna K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Zyna K., the youngest of seven children. She recalls the emigrations of three siblings; her mother's death in 1939, before the war; Soviet occupation; German invasion in 1941; a futile attempt to flee to the Soviet Union; ghettoization; mass killings and burials; and liquidation of the ghetto. Mrs. K. recounts transport to Ri?ga; working in an ammunition factory; transfer after six months by ship with her sister to Stutthof; learning of her father's death; forced labor in Torun?; a death march in 1944; and liberation. She tells of being cared for by a Jewish family in...

  5. Beatrice R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Beatrice R., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1928. She recalls her affluent home; the Anschluss; her father's deportation to Dachau, then Buchenwald, in 1938; sending him packages; her mother liquidating their assets; purchasing her father's passage to Shanghai to obtain his release; his emigration to Shanghai (her mother followed); her mother placing her on a children's transport to Paris; pleasant conditions in a castle; German invasion; transfer to another home; receiving false papers; transfer to a girls' religious home; deportations; her breakdown after many c...

  6. Shlomo Y. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Shlomo Y., who was born in Vilna, Russia (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1917, one of three children. He recounts working in Hrodna; returning to Vilnius in 1937; brief Soviet occupation; antisemitic harassment; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; mass killings at Ponary (he worked nearby and observed the piles of corpses, including his sister, her husband, and infant); ghettoization; working outside the ghetto; sneaking out to avoid round-ups and to buy food; arrest by a German; two friends being killed when they protested his arrest; a Jewish official secur...

  7. Vladimir P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Vladimir P., who was born in Chemerivtsi, Ukraine in 1925. He recalls his father's imprisonment for "Trotskyism" from 1937 to 1939; moving to Kam'i?a?net?s??-Podil?s?kyi? ; fleeing during the German invasion in June 1941; separation from his father; returning home with his family; the arrival of Hungarian Jews; a forced march to mass graves in August; a non-Jewish neighbor assisting him to join a work group; saying goodbye to his mother, brother, and relatives (they were all murderd); escaping from a forced labor camp; posing as a non-Jew; deportation to Vienna in Mar...

  8. Peretz M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Peretz M., who was born in Brooklyn, New York. He recounts his Yiddish background; marriage in 1938; serving in the United States army beginning in 1943; landing in Europe in August 1944; encountering concentration camp survivors near Remse, Germany in April 1945; providing food for them; speaking to them in Yiddish; compiling a list of their names; sending the list to his wife who had it published several places in New York (there was a tremendous response to it); receiving small gifts from the former prisoners; visiting his relatives in Brussels and Paris; visiting ...

  9. Dorothea A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Dorothea A., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1921. She recounts her parents had emigrated from Poland; her father's service for Austria in World War I; two significantly older brothers; her father's forced return to Poland for much of her childhood, due to citizenship issues; studying piano privately, then in conservatory; the Anschluss; expulsion from conservatory due to anti-Jewish laws; confiscation of the family business; one brother's flight to England; her father's hospitalization and death in October 1938; protection by the building superintendent on Kristal...

  10. Nathan R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Nathan R., who was born in Sevluš, Czechoslovakia (presently Vynohradiv, Ukraine) in 1928, the older of two children. He recounts his aunt's emigration to Palestine in 1933; attending cheder and public school; cordial relations with non-Jews; his father's work as a blacksmith; his bar mitzvah; attending gymnasium in Berehove; returning home after Hungarian occupation; attending a Zionist gymnasium in Mukacheve from 1942 to 1944; German invasion in March; returning home; ghettoization; his aunt's non-Jewish boyfriend smuggling food to them; his mother entrusting valua...

  11. Henry F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henry F., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1918. He recalls growing up in a large family; their poverty (his father was disabled in World War I); the day Hitler became chancellor; one sister's emigration to England; stores and synagogues being burned on Kristallnacht; forced labor in a munitions factory in 1940 and 1941; one sister's deportation with her family to Ri?ga (he never saw them again); deportation with his mother and other sisters to Theresienstadt; volunteering for forced labor in Wulkow to exempt his family from deportation out of Theresienstadt; return...

  12. Marianne S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Marianne S., who was born in Mannheim, Germany in 1933 and raised in Steinsfurt, where all the Jews were her relatives. She recalls her uncle's emigration to St. Louis in 1936; her father's reluctance to leave; the wanton destruction of their home on Kristallnacht; her father's arrest and imprisonment in Dachau; the remaining Jews moving into her family's house for safety; receiving food from a non-Jewish tradesman; her father's release from Dachau; harassment by officials as they traveled through Germany in 1940 to leave for the United States; Italian soldiers harass...

  13. Simone G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Simone G., who was born in W?oc?awek, Poland in 1931. She recounts vague memories of her parents and older brother; going to live with an aunt in Paris in 1936 (she never saw her family again); German invasion; her uncle's draft into the French military; his return; her aunt arranging to send her to an orphanage; learning her uncle had been deported; living with a family in central France, posing as a non-Jew; reunion with her aunt and uncle after liberation; living in Septeuil; returning to Paris; their emigration to the United States in 1957; marriage; and her child...

  14. Marc S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Marc S., who was born in 1922 in Kielce, Poland. He recalls antisemitic incidents in his childhood; participating in Zionist activities; his grandmother and older brother emigrating to the United States; German invasion; anti-Jewish regulations; burying his father who was killed as a hostage; ghettoization; smuggling food which kept him from starving to death; his family's deportation in a round-up; hiding three children his brigade found; disbelief when a returned deportee reported gassing at Treblinka; deportation in 1944 to Auschwitz, then Birkenau; improved condit...

  15. Stephen F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Stephen F., who was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1912. He recounts his father's leaving for military service in 1914; his return four years later and death shortly thereafter; turmoil during the Nazi takeover in 1933; attending medical school; being warned to leave prior to a raid (his older sister and brother had already emigrated); an unsuccessful attempt to attend medical school in Strasbourg; studying in Amsterdam; joining his brother and sister in the United States; graduating from Harvard Medical School; getting his mother and grandparents out in 1938; ...

  16. Jacques R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jacques R., who was born in Paris, France in 1941. He recounts his parents were Polish immigrants; different versions of his experiences that he has learned from relatives (he was too young to remember); being captured; a Jewish woman taking him; his parents' deportation to Auschwitz (they were killed); his grandmother convincing the woman to let him go; living with his aunt; hiding on farms and in children's homes; his grandmother's and aunt's successful efforts to reclaim his parents' apartment after the war; living in a children's home from 1949 since his relatives...

  17. Louis H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Louis H., who was born in Flehingen, Germany in 1918. He recalls his family's all-embracing Jewish life prior to Hitler; expulsion from school in 1933 due to anti-Jewish laws; his father's death in 1936; emigrating to Antwerp in 1936, then to the United States in March 1937 to join his sister; bringing his brother and mother to the States; enlistment in the U.S. Army in 1942; serving in France, Holland, and Belgium; participating in the Battle of the Bulge; concerns about being mistaken for a German due to his accent; combat in Germany; entering Nordhausen; shock at t...

  18. Rabbi David K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rabbi David K., who was born in Grimaylov, Poland (presently Ukraine) in 1903. He recalls attending cheder and yeshiva; studying in Ternopil?, Breslau (Wroc?aw), and Vilnius; receiving rabbinical ordination and a doctorate in philosophy; teaching Judaism in L'viv public schools beginning in 1929; Soviet occupation in 1939; teaching history in Yiddish; marriage and his daughter's birth; Ukrainian violence against Jews as the Soviets retreated; German occupation; public executions; working in industrial jobs; ghettoization; changes in administration of the Judenrat due ...

  19. Dori L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Dori L., who was born in Czernowitz, Romania in 1937. Dr. L. describes the large population and rich cultural life of prewar Czernowitz; the Russian occupation; his brief stay in the Czernowitz ghetto; and his deportation, along with his parents, to a camp in Transnistria in spring, 1942. He recalls the five or six months he spent in this camp, a former Russian penal colony on the Bug River known as the "stone quarry". He describes the liquidation of the camp and tells how he and his parents were spared, noting their relative freedom as "illegals" in the deserted camp...

  20. Raysa K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Raysa K., who was born in 1921. She recalls growing up in Kiev; marriage to a Soviet officer in February 1940; working for the Soviet army in Pryluky; German invasion; returning to Kiev in October after the mass killing at Babi Yar; observing posted notices dated September instructing Jews to assemble with warm clothing and their valuables; posing as a non-Jew using false papers; denouncement by a former housekeeper; incarceration, still as a non-Jew; forced labor; assistance from a Ukrainian policeman who recognized her; observing the brutal beatings and killing of J...