Archival Descriptions

Advanced query tips

There are several ways to be more specific in your search query:

"Phrase"
Search an exact match of your query, e.g. "Member lists"
+Phrase
Given word has to be in the result, e.g. +Gestapo
-Phrase
Exclude given word from search, e.g. -Gestapo

Use the following syntax to restrict the search to specific fields:

field:"phrase"
For instance, you can find all descriptions that have the phrase "Auschwitz Birkenau" in their titles by searching for title:"Auschwitz Birkenau".

The following fields are currently available:

  • identifier
  • title
  • creator
  • person
  • place
  • subject
  • address
Displaying items 281 to 300 of 4,487
Search result ordering
Language of Description: English
Language of Description: Multiple
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Hildegard B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hildegard B., who was born in Liberec, Czechoslovakia in 1926 to a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother. She recalls her older brother and sister studying law in Prague; anti-Jewish restrictions after 1938; expulsion from school; her brother's emigration to the United States; her sister's marriage to a Czech military pilot; moving to Prague; expulsion from their home in March 1939; her father's escape to Yugoslavia, then Palestine; her mother's interrogations by the SS; living in her maternal grandparents' attic in Jablonec; hiding with paternal relatives in Liberec; r...

  2. Frima L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Frima L., who was born in Volochisk, Ukraine in 1936. She recounts moving to a larger city; German invasion in 1941; ghettoization; being caught in a round-up; waiting near the edge of a mass grave; a reprieve when her mother convinced a German they were Ukrainian; interrogations when it was suspected they were Jewish; escaping; hiding with non-Jewish neighbors; returning to the ghetto; escaping with her mother (her father was caught and killed); hiding with non-Jewish friends while her mother escaped to Romania; being asked to leave; buying a large crucifix to wear; ...

  3. Sali B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sali B., who was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1924. Mrs. B. recalls her childhood; German occupation in March 1939; anti-Jewish legislation; one brother's forced emigration to Poland; her father's execution in October 1941; deportation to Auschwitz of another brother and relatives; and deportation with her mother, younger brother, and sister to Theresienstadt. She describes relatively good conditions in their early incarceration; work in the kitchen; unsuccessful efforts to prevent her mother's deportation to Auschwitz in March 1944; deportation to Auschwitz with h...

  4. Andrew S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Andrew S., who was born in Potrete, Hungary, in 1929. This testimony includes and expands upon the information from an earlier interview (HVT-495). Mr. S. details his family history; the origins of prewar antisemitism; and increasingly severe anti-Jewish laws. He graphically describes the loss of privacy and dignity during deportation; local people's sympathy; intense feelings of being lost and humiliated upon arrival in Auschwitz; the importance of the prisoners' caring about each other; and longing for a normal life in abnormal circumstances. He reflects on his rece...

  5. Arnold and Lionel R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Arnold R. who was born in 1928 in a town in Slovakia, and his brother Lionel R., who was born in the same town in 1926. Both brothers describe their Orthodox upbringing; the Hungarian and German occupations; their life in the ghetto at Munka?cs; the liquidation of the ghetto; and widespread violence and cruelty. They relate their transport to and arrival at Auschwitz; separation from their mother; their transfer, along with their father, to Mauthausen; and their slave labor in Melk and Ebensee. They also tell of their support of each other and their father during this...

  6. Yaffa U. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Yaffa U., who was born in Švenčionys, Poland (presently Lithuania) in 1927, the youngest of three children. She recalls her large, extended family; their affluence; Soviet occupation in 1939; confiscation of their land and houses; her brother and sister leaving; German invasion in June 1941; Lithuanians taking her father (she never saw him again); giving their valuables to non-Jewish neighbors; forced labor in Polygon; living with her extended family; her uncle bribing a Lithuanian for their release (her mother remained and she never saw her again); returning to Šv...

  7. Daisy M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Daisy M., who was born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia in 1938. She recounts illegally crossing the Italian border in 1941 with her parents, an aunt, and two cousins; living in Montecatini for almost a year; leaving illegally in September 1943 after hearing of deportations; partisans hiding them in a village outside Florence for two months; being hidden elsewhere after Germans neared; farmers bringing them food; warnings of German patrols during which they hid in a pit and mountain caves; liberation by South African troops; returning to the village outside Florence; her father'...

  8. Moshe R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Moshe R., who was born in Švenčionys, Lithuania in 1923, the oldest of five children. He recounts his relatively affluent family; attending a Jewish school, then engineering school in Vilnius in 1939; participating in Hechalutz; Soviet occupation; attending a Russian school; German invasion; round-up of his father and brother for work (they never returned); ghettoization; his cousin Yitzhak Arad living with them; forced labor sorting weapons; a German soldier encouraging his group to escape; escaping with Arad and others to the Glubokoye ghetto; Arad's sister arrang...

  9. Leon K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leon K., who was born in Sulmierzyce, Poland. He recalls moving to Cze?stochowa; attending high school; antisemitic incidents; learning the leather business; German invasion; mass killings; forced labor; deportation to a labor camp in Ukraine with friends from a Zionist youth organization; resisting the guards; escaping, with assistance from local Jews, to Hrubieszo?w; returning to Cze?stochowa; ghettoization; his family's deportation in 1942; disbelieving accounts of escaped prisoners from Treblinka; slave labor in HASAG/Pelzery and Racho?w; escaping with assistance ...

  10. Jean M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jean M., who was born in Zawalo?w, Poland, in 1922 to a well-established family. She relates attending school in Marijampole? and Stanislav; anti-Semitic incidents; German invasion; forced labor; German humiliation of the Jews; her brother's death at age fourteen in a labor camp; transfer to the Podhajce ghetto; her father's deportation; and her mother's death from typhus, though she herself survived it. Mrs. M. describes "aktions"; hiding in bunkers; the resulting physical and psychological difficulties; mass killings; liquidation of the ghetto; escaping; hiding in t...

  11. Stepha S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Stepha S., who was born in Skierniewice, Poland. She recalls her and her family's illegal communist activities; hiding in ?o?dz? to avoid arrest in 1936; fleeing to Paris; living with her uncle's family; her brothers and parents following her; active participation in a communist, Jewish organization (Arbeiter Ring); marriage to a Polish Jew; his mobilization at the outbreak of war in 1939; her daughter's birth; German occupation; increasing anti-Jewish measures; imprisonment of Jewish men at Beaune-La-Rolande, including her husband and brothers; moving to be near her ...

  12. Robert M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Robert M., who was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1927. He recalls moving to Berlin in 1930; Hermann Go?ring living in their apartment house; returning to Amsterdam in 1935 due to Nazism; his parents' divorce; living with his father and sister; German invasion in May 1940; his bar mitzvah; his father's arrest as a prominent Dutch official, not as a Jew, by Ferdinand aus der Fu?nten; his father's return after six months; a German woman warning them of round-ups; being caught and released once; hiding with his father and sister after a warning; their Jewish housekeep...

  14. Millie S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Millie S., who was born in Grossenlinden, Germany in 1991. She recalls cordial relations with non-Jews; attending public school; changes after Hitler became known; her brother being stabbed by a young Nazi in 1928; marriage; her son's birth; her parents' and younger brother's emigration to the United States in 1936; her husband's and brother-in-law's imprisonment on Kristallnacht; hiding with her son when her apartment was ransacked; the police chief warning her to leave town; traveling to Frankfurt; learning her husband was in Buchenwald; the town's mayor warning her...

  15. Linda P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Linda P., who was born in Grodno, Poland (now Hrodna, Belarus) in 1931. She recalls an anti-Jewish riot in the mid 1930s; Soviet occupation; German invasion in 1941; ghettoization; deportation to Treblinka; immediate transfer to Majdanek with 100 women, including her mother; slave labor sorting clothing of those who were exterminated; hospitalization for typhus; being saved by a nurse; transfer to Trawniki, then back to Majdanek in June 1944; a death march and train transport to Auschwitz/Birkenau; transfer to Bergen-Belsen in November 1944, then to Aschersleben; slav...

  16. Ruth S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ruth S., who was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1937. She describes her father emigrating from Germany in 1933; his continued contact with his family in Germany; marriage to her mother in 1934; their bourgeois life; German invasion in 1940; her father hiding to avoid arrest; her parents' decision to leave in spite of sympathetic treatment from the Danes; her maternal grandparents' arrest in 1943 (she later learned they were deported to Terezi?n); escape with her parents to Malmo?, Sweden in October 1943; living with relatives there; celebrating the Danish liberation; ...

  17. Michel K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Michel K., who was born in Paris, France in 1927 to eastern European immigrants. He recalls their secular life; speaking Yiddish at home (his parents never learned French); vacationing with his family in Marboz when the war started; attending school near Dijon; returning to Paris; German occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions, including wearing the star; his mother's death in November 1940; hiding during round-ups, including the Ve?lodrome d'hiver in July 1942; placement with his sister on a farm in Chammes; learning his father had been sent to Drancy (he never saw him ...

  18. Victor B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Victor B., who was born in Re?zekne, Russia (presently Latvia) in 1915. He describes his assimilated family; his and his older brother's communist militancy; his secular "bar mitzvah"; arrest in 1936 for political activities; eight months imprisonment in Ri?ga; illegally traveling to Paris using false papers; completing law school; enlisting in the Foreign Legion in September 1939; being stationed in Le Barcares in 1940; attending officer training school; demobilization in Aix-en-Provence; living there, then in Marseille; forming a business as a front for Resistance a...

  19. Dagan B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Dagan B., who was born in Lakhva, Poland (presently Belarus) in 1927, the youngest of seven children. He recounts attending a Yavneh school; his brother's and sister's marriages and births of their children; participating in a Zionist youth group; Soviet occupation; his brother's military draft; German invasion; Dov Lopatin (head of the Judenrat) negotiating with the Germans; anti-Jewish restrictions; daily forced labor; ghettoization; slave labor in a steel mill; an underground group led by their neighbor, Itshak Rokhchin; the ghetto revolt after hearing they would a...

  20. Donald R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Donald R., who was born in Amsterdam, Holland in 1917 to Polish immigrants. He recalls his father's death in 1918; moving to Berlin in 1920; his mother's remarriage; anti-Jewish laws resulting in his expulsion from school in 1934; working for Ford; expulsion from Germany in 1938 as a Polish citizen; Poland's refusal to admit him and other Jews; smuggling himself to his uncle's farm in Poland; being joined by his mother, stepfather, and brother; living in Krako?w; traveling to Berlin to obtain a United States visa; remaining in Germany beyond the permitted date; travel...