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Displaying items 141 to 160 of 816
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Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Arnost K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Arnost K., who was born in Uherský Brod, Czechslovakia (presently Czech Republic) in 1921. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; participating in Maccabi ha-Ẓair; arrival of German-Jewish refugees in the mid-1930s; German occupation; a non-Jewish friend helping him save objects from their synagogue when it was burned; supporting resistance activities; a policeman warning him he was going to be arrested; illegally entering Slovakia in March 1942; hiding with a Jewish woman in Nové Mesto nad Váhom; arrest by the Hlinka guard; his friend obtaining his release; escaping ...

  2. Walter P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Walter P., who was born in Erlangen, Germany in 1926. He recalls his family moving to Berlin in 1933; attending public school until his expulsion as a Jew; attending a Jewish school; destruction of the store where his father worked on Kristallnacht; moving into a one-room apartment after his father lost his job; the outbreak of war; avoiding round-ups with the help of a friendly policeman; his bar mitzvah in 1940; his fear and humiliation after the introduction of the Jewish star in September 1941; learning Spanish and English in school in preparation for emigration; ...

  3. Ruth N. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ruth N., who was born in Magdeburg, Germany in 1928. She recounts moving to Swinemünde (now Świnoujście, Poland) with her family in 1932; her father's brief arrest in 1934; moving to Stettin (now Szczecin, Poland), then to Italy in 1935; living in Novara and Milan; their illegal entry into France in March 1939; brief arrest in Menton; attending Catholic schools in Lyon; German invasion; concealing their Jewish identity; illegally entering Switzerland with her mother and siblings in October 1942 (her father followed); internment in Geneva; transfer to a children's h...

  4. Fred H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Fred H., who was born in Stan?kov in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (presently Czech Republic) in 1906. He recounts his family's move to Plzen? in 1909; attending public school; his father's service in the first World War; his Austrian patriotism; the transition to Czechoslovakia; studying in Paris and Prague; accompanying a cousin to the United States in August 1938; deciding not to return after the Munich agreement; illegally living in Toronto and Montre?al; receiving a U.S. visa; traveling to London; meeting his mother and brother in Paris in August 1939; their emig...

  5. Gerhart R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gerhart R., who was born in Berlin. He discusses his pre-1933 career as a junior lawyer and state employee in Berlin; his dismissal when Hitler came to power; his departure from Germany in 1933; and his post as legal secretary for the newly created World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Geneva. He relates his struggle for the rights of the Danzig Jews; the successful WJC campaign in 1938 against the anti-Semitic government of Romania; his responsibility to inform WJC officials in Geneva and New York of wartime atrocities; and his sources of information about Nazi medical expe...

  6. Jenny S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jenny S., who was born in 1926 in Vienna, Austria, an only child. She recalls an comfortable and happy life; warm Sabbath and holiday observances; changes, particularly after the Anchluss; her father's arrest and release; eviction from their apartment; her father's second arrest (she never saw him again); her mother registering her for emigration to the United States; leaving Vienna in May 1941; spending three days in Berlin with her mother and her friend Louise prior to leaving; their painful departure (she never saw her again); traveling with Louise; a ship voyage f...

  7. Alfred W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alfred W., who was born in Fu?rth, Germany in 1908. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; their strong German identity; cordial relations with non-Jews; attending Henry Kissinger's bar mitzvah; joining the family manufacturing business; serving on the town council; resigning after the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933; helping Jews emigrate; observing the synagogues burning on Kristallnacht and arrest by a former colleague; incarceration overnight in Nuremberg; helping a rabbi climb into the train, thus saving his life; internment in Dachau; assistance from...

  8. Eva M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva M., who was born in Breslau, Germany (presently Wroc?aw, Poland) in 1918, one of three sisters. She recalls her family's assimilated lifestyle; attending private school; teaching in a Jewish kindergarten; one sister's emigration to South Africa in 1933; her other sister remaining in Berlin (she was protected as the wife of a non-Jewish judge); participation in Maccabi; her father and future husband's arrests on Kristallnacht; marriage after their release; her husband's emigration to Bolivia; traveling via Genoa to join him in December; her parents not emigrating b...

  9. Rita W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rita W., who was born in Mukachevo, Czechoslovakia in 1924. Mrs. W. recalls living in a Czech colony in the Carpathian mountains with very few Jews; high school membership in a Zionist organization; Hungarian occupation; anti-Jewish measures; her father assisting Polish refugees; his arrest and return six months later; his stories of Hungarian brutality; ghettoization in April 1944 for four weeks; and deportation to Auschwitz. She recounts her arrival to an unknown place, but sensing danger; one sister giving her baby to their mother (that sister survived); another si...

  10. Gertrud K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gertrud K., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1923. Mrs. K. recalls a comfortable life; strong Jewish identity; watching mass demonstrations when the Germans marched in; the plundering of her father's business two days later; ransacking of their home; and public humiliation of her father. She remembers Kristallnacht; her father and one brother's arrest; her other brother hiding; several weeks later her father's letter from Dachau; receiving permission to leave on a Kindertransport to Scotland; reluctance to leave with her father in prison; and begging a Gestapo offic...

  11. John M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of John M., who was born in approximately 1932. He recalls his family's sense of being Austrian, not Jewish (he was baptized); knowing they were Jewish due to antisemitism; leaving Vienna six weeks after the Anschluss; being placed with his brother in hiding in a convent in Belgrade; living in Nice for several months; departing for England; attending many schools, sometimes with his brother, sometimes alone; seeing his mother infrequently (she provided important emotional support); harassment as Germans; changing their last name to their mother's maiden name (their fathe...

  12. Olga F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Olga F., who was born in Lwo?w, Poland in 1925. She recalls her family's move to Czernowitz in 1927; increasing antisemitism; summer visits to relatives in Lwo?w; an influx of Jewish refugees after the German invasion of Poland; their inability to sense the imminent danger; Soviet occupation; deportation of property owners to Siberia; German invasion; destruction of Jewish property; ghettoization; deportation to Ataki, then Transnistria by Romanian forces; moving to Mogilev, then Derebchin; food shortages and overcrowding; being hidden by her mother to avoid forced la...

  13. Victoria B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Victoria B., who was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1927. She recalls a peaceful life in a large, extended Turkish family in Antwerp; German occupation in 1940; fleeing with her family via De Panne to Marseille; her father's return to Antwerp to oversee his business; attending school in Marseille; returning to Antwerp; obtaining protection from the Turkish government to temporarily escape deportation; hiding in a convent in La Hulpe; returning to Antwerp; hiding in a castle in Les Avins-en-Condroz (she was given false papers), then with her English teacher in Antwerp; tr...

  14. Cypora G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Cypora G., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1920, one of seven children. She recalls her family's extreme poverty; her mother's efforts to feed them; attending a Bund school; working from age ten to help support her family; her mother's death; studying theater on a scholarship; meeting her future husband; performing in many locations with a theater group; the emigration of three sisters; German invasion; her future husband having her smuggled to Bia?ystok; working in Yiddish theater; moving to Vilnius; traveling to Tashkent; living in Farghona; marriage; returning to...

  15. Sarah W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sarah W., who was born in Kovno, Lithuania in 1905. She recalls moving to Antwerp with her family; her mother's death; attending Hebrew school; marriage in 1927; her son's birth in 1928; moving to Luxembourg where her husband was a rabbi; German invasion in 1940; anti-Jewish measures; fleeing to Paris with her husband and three children; traveling by train through Spain to the Portuguese border; futile attempts to enter Portugal with assistance from the Joint; returning to France; internment with her family in Bayonne; her son's bar mitzvah in a local synagogue; trave...

  16. Peter S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Peter S., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1938. He recounts moving to Prague with his parents in 1933, then to Amsterdam in 1938; attending a Dutch school; German invasion; anti-Jewish measures including expulsion from school, wearing the star, and having to move; obtaining Ecuadorian passports from relatives in Sweden; deportation to Westerbork in January 1944, then to Bergen-Belsen three months later; forced labor in a shoe commando; deteriorating conditions after prisoners arrived from Auschwitz; their transfer, three months prior to war's end, to Algeria as par...

  17. Herbert K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Herbert K., who was born in Borken, Germany in 1920, the youngest of six children. He recalls his family's strong German identity and their Jewish orthodoxy; expulsion from gymnasium in 1933; attending school in Winterswijk, Netherlands from 1937 on; learning of his parents' arrest on Kristallnacht; emigration of two brothers to the United States; bringing two brothers and his sister to the Netherlands with assistance from his uncle in Amsterdam; their incarceration in Westerbork as illegal immigrants; working on a farm from 1939 through the spring of 1943; hiding wit...

  18. Jean H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jean H., who was born in Danzig, Germany in 1920. She describes family and community life during the 1930s, noting the integration of Jews and non-Jews before 1933; the strong German identity of her father and the rest of her relatives; the beginning of anti-Jewish legislation, which prompted the Jewish community to establish its own schools; her involvement in a Jewish youth group until 1936; increasingly violent displays of antisemitism; and the general deterioration of the Jewish situation. She relates hearing stories of concentration camps in Germany and recalls t...

  19. Herman L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Herman L., a non-Jew, who was born in Tienen, Belgium in 1919. He recalls his father's commitment to Marxism; his parents' divorce when he was thirteen; attending schools and universities in Brussels, Charleroi, Ghent, and Cologne; observing persecution of Jews in Germany; his mother assisting Jewish refugees; German invasion; biking to France; encountering his father; going with him to Limoges, Dijon, and Paris; returning to university in Ghent; arrest in 1943 for communist and union activities; imprisonment in Breendonk; meaningless forced labor; being forced to par...

  20. Ernest H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ernest H., who was born in Munich, Germany in 1921. He describes his assimilated and wealthy family background; antisemitic incidents at school; his father's belief that Hitler's rise to power would not last long enough to impact them; the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses on April 1, 1933; completing his education in Switzerland; visiting his parents for the last time during the summer of 1938; internment in a Swiss camp after the German invasion of France in 1940; being chosen by a Joint representative for emigration to the Dominican Republic; and traveling via Fran...