Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 241 to 260 of 4,487
Language of Description: English
Language of Description: Multiple
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Carol W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Carol W., a child of Holocaust survivors who was born in the United States in 1954. She relates her childhood sense of her Jewishness and tells of learning of her parents' wartime experiences only very gradually. She describes the experience of her father, who was born in Poland in 1921, and who came to New Haven in 1949, and of her mother, who was born in Germany in 1928, and who came to the United States in 1939. Mrs. W. also describes the impact of her parents' personal histories on her own life.

  2. Ivan K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ivan K., who was born in Nitra, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1938, the younger of two brothers. He recounts living in Janova Ves; his and his family's conversion to Christianity in 1942; changing their surname to a more Christian one; their exemption from deportation due to his father's job building barracks in Topol̕čany; his participation in the Slovak uprising in 1944; his mother's denunciation as a Jew; hiding in a mansion with his aunt, mother, and brother; staying in tents in a nearby forest; returning to the mansion; finding his father there; digging...

  3. Eva W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva W. who was born in Cluj, Romania. She recalls a comfortable childhood as the daughter of an attorney; pervasive antisemitism; Hungarian occupation in 1940; restrictive anti-Jewish laws; her shame at wearing a yellow star; ghettoization in 1944; her humiliation at forced nudity; deportation to Auschwitz; caring for her mother; meeting two cousins after her mother's selection for death; witnessing a prisoner giving birth; transfer to Birkenau; receiving bread and shoes from a male prisoner; selection with other "Aryan-looking" girls by Mengele; transfer to Weisswass...

  4. Jack R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jack R., who was born in Bran?sk, Poland in 1913. He recalls German invasion; Soviet occupation; German occupation in 1941; ghettoization; forced labor; fleeing deportation with his brother's family; hiding in the forest, then in the stable of Polish acquaintances; placing his brother's infant with a family in another village; rescuing the child upon hearing it would be turned in; separation from the others during a German attack; entering the Bia?ystok ghetto; and learning his brother and family had been killed. Mr. R. recounts forced labor in early 1943; hiding duri...

  5. Bedrich B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Bedrich B., who was born in Nové Mesto nad Váhom, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1924, the younger of two brothers. He recalls his parents were intellectuals and hard working (his father was a physician, his mother a piano teacher); cordial relations with non-Jews; a very assimilated lifestyle; antisemitism and anti-Jewish restrictions beginning with Slovak independence in 1938; leaving high school; training as an auto mechanic; brief imprisonments in Hungary and Slovakia, then in Nováky in April 1942, for attempts to illegally enter Hungary; learning his p...

  6. Liane R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Liane R., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1934. She recalls the Anschluss; her father's apparent suicide in September 1938 after he was forced to close his dental practice; Kristallnacht; embarking on the St. Louis with her mother and brother in 1939; being denied entry to Cuba; sailing between Cuba and Florida while efforts were made to find refuge; and having to return to Europe. Mrs. R. recounts living in Loudun, France for over two years; German invasion; fleeing to Limoges; Jewish organizations which arranged their schooling and her brother's violin lessons an...

  7. Irving B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Irving B., who was born in Khust, Czechoslovakia in 1924. He recalls his large, orthodox family; attending public school; Hungarian occupation in 1938; his father's death; anti-Jewish laws; fleeing to Budapest in 1943; brief arrest; fleeing to Nyi?regyha?za, then Szeged, in 1944; ghettoization in March; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau, Mauthausen, then Melk; slave labor digging trenches; assisting a rabbi from his hometown; defusing undetonated bombs; transfer to Ebensee; fellow prisoners hiding him and sharing their food when he was too ill to work; cannibalism; an...

  8. David S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of David S., who was born in Zawiercie, Poland in 1914, the youngest of seven children. He recalls his family's affluence; draft into the Polish military; capture by Germans in Tarnowskie Go?ry; incarceration in Stalag VIII A Go?rlitz for six months; returning home; ghettoization; deportation with his family to Auschwitz/Birkenau with his family (he never saw any of them again); transfer to Lagisza; return to Auschwitz; hospitalization; working in the Union Kommando; the death march to Gross-Rosen; escaping from a train transport in Sudetenland; stealing civilian clothes...

  9. Sam F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sam F., who was born in Dokshit?s?y, Belarus. (then Poland) in 1913. He recalls his family; attending yeshiva; work in his uncle's bakery at age fourteen; his sister's emigration to Palestine; attempts to join her; membership in a Vilna zionist organization; conflicts between Lithuania and Poland in Vilna; a pogrom; his escape to Il?i?a?; service in the Polish army; and the German invasion. He recalls a mass killing in March 1942; hiding; ghettoization; another mass killing; escape to the woods; hiding with a farmer, then in the forests for six months; joining the par...

  10. Ben L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ben L., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1922. He recalls anti-Jewish violence; attending rabbinical school to please his mother; his father's death in 1938; German invasion; ghettoization in 1940; a work assignment outside the ghetto; trading valuables for food to Polish smugglers; his mother and younger brother being smuggled out (he never saw them again); not escaping in order to protect his sister; hiding in a bunker during the uprising; discovery; deportation to Treblinka; selection for transfer to Majdanek after a few days; transfer a few months later to Auschw...

  11. Arieh B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Arieh B., who was born in Paris, France in 1935. He recalls his father's arrest and return a month later; hiding in a rural area with his parents and younger brother; their discovery in 1942 and return to Paris; his mother's attempt to strangle him in German headquarters, but being stopped by his father; being placed in an orphanage with his brother; constant hunger; running away to a convent with older children; placement in a foster home in Normandy; the trauma of separation from his brother who was in another foster home; his profound loneliness; liberation in July...

  12. Alexander L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alexander L., a non-Jew who was born in Kiev in 1936. He describes leaving Russia in 1941 at the onset of the German occupation of Kiev; the fear of being separated from his parents; and imprisonment in labor camps in Germany from 1942 until 1944/1945. He remembers on-going travel, and hearing shots fired but never seeing any bodies. He tells of going to Czechoslovakia after the war and expresses the hope that his children will never have similar experiences.

  13. Hedy B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hedy B., who was born in Miskolc, Hungary, in 1930. Mrs. B. recounts childhood in an assimilated family of a civil servant; increasing antisemitism after 1938; her family's unwillingness to separate when her father obtained two tickets to America; her father's conscription into a Hungarian labor battalion in 1942 (from which he never returned); eviction from her home and the ghettoization of Miskolc in 1944; clergymen who offered conversion to ghetto inhabitants; transfer to a nearby quarry which was bombed shortly before her deportation; and arrival at Auschwitz in M...

  14. Jenny R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jenny R., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1919 to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. She recounts her mother's death in 1923; placement in a children's home where she was very unhappy; returning to her father; expulsion from school in 1933 due to anti-Jewish laws, although she did not consider herself Jewish; her father's arrest in summer 1933; visiting him in prison; his transfer to a concentration camp, then his release; difficulty obtaining and keeping jobs due to racial laws; having to prove that her mother was an "Aryan"; rumors of gas chambers and killi...

  15. Edith B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Edith B., who was born in Kon?us?, Czechoslovakia in 1923. She remembers Hungarian occupation; deportation to Ungvar, then Auschwitz in May 1944; separation from her family (she later learned her brother and father were alive in the male barracks); transfer to Frankfurt; forced labor; taunting of the prisoners because of their Yom Kippur prayers; starvation; a beating for smuggling food; a German guard allowing her to rest during work until she recovered her strength; transfer to Ravensbru?ck in December 1944; working at a Siemens factory; being saved from death by no...

  16. Ruchama P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ruchama P., who was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1922, the youngest of three children. She recounts her mother's death when she was two; attending Jewish, then public school; her father's remarriage; a troubled relationship with her stepmother; participating in Hechalutz; attending a boarding school in 1937; visiting her family on holidays; living briefly with her paternal grandparents; German invasion; her brothers' participation in the underground; one wanting to put her in hiding, but refusing to leave her younger half-siblings; deportation to Westerbork; a cl...

  17. Sam G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sam G., who was born in Tarno?w, Poland in 1928. He recalls a secure childhood; attending a Jewish school; German occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions; his parents' conflict when his brother fled to L'viv; his bar mitzvah in the ghetto on June 21, 1941; hiding with his parents during a round-up; mass shooting of the Jewish council witnessed by their Christian maid; moving to a furriers' workshop; his parents' deportation to Be?z?ec (he never saw them again); surviving a selection by stealing a work permit; escaping from the ghetto with assistance from their maid (she ...

  18. John F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of John F., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1917. He recalls his mother's Sabbath observance; the death of one younger sister; outbreaks of antisemitism; studying medicine; membership in Zionist organizations; the Anschluss in 1938; confiscation of his father's business; illegally traveling to Venice in August; staying with an aunt in Trieste; returning to Venice; traveling to Zurich on a tourist visa; his father's arrest after Kristallnacht; attempting to obtain visas to China for his parents and siblings in Bern; resuming his studies; helping his professor smuggle h...

  19. Avivit K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Avivit K., who was born in Šiauliai, Lithuania in 1932, one of three children. She recounts her family's Zionism; speaking Hebrew at home; a trip to Palestine in 1935 with her mother and sister; her family delaying emigration to care for her developmentally disabled brother; Soviet occupation; her father's arrest and release; German invasion; her father's and uncle's arrest by Lithuanians (they were killed); ghettoization; forced labor with her sister; Lithuanians giving her food; a public hanging; her mother hiding her sister with non-Jews (she returned shortly ther...