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 29,721 to 29,740 of 33,308
Search result ordering
Language of Description: English

  1. Estelle A. and Regina G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Estelle A., who was born in Berchem, Belgium in 1936. She recalls celebrating Jewish holidays with her uncle's family; her father's conscription for forced labor (she never saw him again); seeking places to sleep with her mother and sister, fearing arrest; her mother placing them in a convent; the kindness of many nuns; her mother's visits; transfers to several foster homes and orphanages; receiving false names and instructions to pose as Catholics; placement in a Jewish children's home in Wezembeek; attending school; placement in another orphanage; its occupation by ...

  2. Judy J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Judy J., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1937. She recalls summers with her maternal grandparents in Be?ke?s; her uncle's conscription into a forced labor battalion around 1941 (she never saw him again); her father's conscription two separate times and the loss of his medical practice; German invasion in March 1944; increased anti-Jewish restrictions; relatives moving to their home in a designated Jewish area; leaving Budapest with her parents on June 30, 1944 on the Kasztner train, ostensibly for Portugal; a brief layover in Linz, Austria; arrival at Bergen-Bels...

  3. Mania W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mania W., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland, one of six children. She recalls her large, extended family; their textile businesses and affluence; holiday and Sabbath gatherings; German invasion; fleeing with her father, brother, and one sister to Warsaw; returning home; ghettoization; forced labor; starvation; hiding during round-ups; a neighbor saving her baby sister during a selection; her father's death; her work manager supplying extra food when she was sick; deportation with her family to Auschwitz in August 1944; remaining with one sister (the others did not surviv...

  4. Vladka M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Vladka M., who was born in Warsaw, Poland. She speaks of her prewar family life; the beatings of her father and brother by the German police; and the establishment of the Warsaw ghetto in November 1940. She recalls her involvement in a socialist youth organization which was forming illegal groups; her job as an underground courier between Warsaw and Tomaszo?w Mazowiecki, a nearby ghetto; the establishment of an illegal Jewish cultural group in the Warsaw ghetto; and the maintenance of illegal schools and public kitchens there. She discusses the Judenrat; the Jewish po...

  5. Matilda H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Matilda H., who was born in Prešov, Czechoslovakia in 1924, one of eight children. She recalls participating in Hashomer Hatzair and a communist youth group; deportation in March 1942 to Poprad, then Auschwitz; slave labor; transfer to Birkenau; various assignments, including the Canada Kommando; joining a resistance group; contracting typhus; organized distribution of "stolen" food and medicine by the resistance; her eldest sister's arrival, then selection for gassing; the death march to Ravensbrück; assisting her friend; posing as non-Jewish political prisoners; e...

  6. Arie T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Arie T., who was born in Thessalonikē, Greece in 1925, the fourth of six children. He recalls a large and close extended family; cordial relations with non-Jews until the rise of a fascist party in the 1930s; his mother's death in 1937; working in a carpentry factory to help support his family; his older brother's marriage and the births of his two children; military draft of two brothers; German invasion; a round-up of Jewish men over eighteen in July 1942 for forced labor, including two brothers; a non-Jew taking one of them to his workshop to protect him; ghettoiz...

  7. Anna J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anna J., who was born in W?oc?awek, Poland in 1924. She recalls family celebrations of Jewish holidays; cordial relations with non-Jews; rising antisemitism in the late 1930s; her father's emigration to Palestine in 1938 and return six months later; German invasion; deteriorating conditions; moving with her family to the Warsaw ghetto in 1940; severe overcrowding; selling her dowry for food; escaping with help from a non-Jewish woman from W?oc?awek; traveling to a village by train; a Jewish doctor operating on her severe infection; recovering with a friend's family; l...

  8. Morris K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Morris K., who was born in Pruz?h?any, Poland (presently Belarus) in approximately 1921 to an orthodox, middle class family with five children. In addition to information included in a subsequently recorded testimony (HVT-232), Mr. K. recounts attending cheder and yeshiva; antisemitic harassment before the war; his father's death in the Pruz?h?any ghetto; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; remaining with his brothers; his brothers' transfer to another work kommando (they both died a few weeks later); working with a cousin in a leather factory; hospitalization after Al...

  9. Gizella K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gizella K., who was born in Budapest in 1907. She recalls her affluent childhood; pervasive antisemitism; her mother managing the family factory after her father's death; marriage; a daughter's birth; divorce and remarriage; her mother and daughter visiting the United States in 1939; difficulties getting them back after the war began; her second daughter's birth in 1943; learning her younger brother was killed in a forced labor battalion; her husband coming home almost nightly from his forced labor; placing her daughters in a convent; getting the younger child back; G...

  10. Claire S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Claire S., who was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1935 to Polish parents. She recalls her parents' divorce; her father's remarriage; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; her mother requesting that non-Jewish neighbors care for Mrs. S.; her mother's deportation to Auschwitz (she never saw her again); her father visiting prior to being deported (he perished); a loving relationship with her foster family; not attending school for fear of discovery; and traveling to Lie?ge and Verviers to avoid Gestapo searches. She recounts her aunt's legal action to obtain custody o...

  11. Lucia K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lucia K., who was born in Rajcza, Poland in 1929, one of five children. She recounts her family's orthodoxy; attending a Polish school; participating in a Zionist youth group; antisemitic violence; emigration of aunts to Mexico, Palestine, and London; German invasion; forced labor; forced relocation to Sucha; ghettoization; a selection in July 1942; separation from her parents and youngest brother (she never saw them again); deportation with sixty others from her town to Freiberg; separation from her brother; slave labor in a fabric factory; civilian workers giving th...

  12. Bella L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Bella L., who was born in Shyrokyy Luh, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1922, one of twelve children. She recounts her family's orthodoxy; older siblings' marriages; attending public school; visiting a sister in Nove? Za?mky; Hungarian occupation; forced relocation to Budapest because she was not a resident; not being able to return home for nine months; attempts in Budapest to obtain Hungarian papers for her father to prevent his deportation; arrest and incarceration in a Budapest prison in 1943; transfer to a labor camp; working in a knitting factory; assistan...

  13. William M. and Leonard S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leonard S., an African American, who enlisted in the United States Army in November 1941. He recalls encountering discrimination for the first time during tank training in the south; deployment to England in 1944; embarkation in France; participating in the Battle of the Bulge; fighting their way into a fenced area (he later learned it was Dachau); cessation of German firing; observing naked, severely emaciated men falling out of the barracks; offering them food; being told not to feed them since it could do more harm than good; securing the outer area; the stench of ...

  14. Margaret W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Margaret W., who was born in Izki, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1927, the third of four children in an Orthodox family. She recalls attending a Czech school; Hungarian occupation; her father sending her and her sister to Uz?h?horod; returning home in spring 1944; ghettoization; deportation to Auschwitz in May; separation from her family; transfer to Kaufering with some friends from Izki; slave labor; some Wehrmacht guards giving them extra bread; transfer to Dachau; heavy construction work; transfer to Bergen-Belsen; corpses strewn everywhere; starvation; lib...

  15. Helga S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Helga S. who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1932. She recounts Kristallnacht; being sent on a children's transport to England with her brother in March 1939; living in Nottingham with relatives; moving to Oxford after the war began to avoid German bombing; mistreatment by her host family; living with an aunt in London; attending boarding school; her brother's accidental death in 1942; her mother's subsequent breakdown while interned in France; her father's emigration to Shanghai; reuniting with her parents in Paris in 1947; their inability to connect emotionally ("we ...

  16. David S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of David S., who was born in Dubeczno, Poland in 1923. He recalls attending public school, then yeshiva; antisemitic violence in school; leaving yeshiva against his parents' wishes; living with a sister in Lublin; German invasion in September 1939; returning home; going to a brother's home in W?odowa; crossing to the Soviet zone; being forced to move to Kovel?; deportation with his brothers to a forced labor camp in Siberia; release in 1942; traveling to Tashkent; working in Kazakhstan; returning to Lublin in spring 1944; learning of the "final solution" and Sobibor; ret...

  17. Inge Marie B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Inge Marie B., a non-Jew, who was born in Austria in 1929 and lived in Vienna and nearby Mo?dling. Mrs. B. recounts her experiences as a child and young adult in Austria prior to, during, and after the war. Among the topics discussed are the arrest of her father, a Social Democrat, and his premature death in 1939; the burning of a synagogue; and the auction of Jewish property and other anti-Jewish activities which she witnessed. She also recalls Nazi ideology taught in school; Nazi organizations which Austrian women and children were required to join; her evacuation t...

  18. Maurice F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Maurice F., who served in the United States military, 2nd Infantry Regiment, in a medical detachment from 1943 to 1945. He recalls encountering a group of approximately seventy-five emaciated women in Eggenfelden, who related to him that they had been on a death march; their sense of hopelessness; their desire for Jewish contact (he spoke to them in Yiddish); his unit and local people disinterring bodies of others from their group and reburying them in coffins; his special bond with the women because he was Jewish; and some postwar correspondence. He notes sending pho...

  19. Sally F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sally F., who was born in Przeworsk, Poland in 1934. She recalls cordial relations with non-Jews; German invasion in 1939; housing German soldiers; one of them warning her father of future danger; anti-Jewish regulations; receiving orders for "resettlement"; her father deciding to hide based on the German soldier's warning; hiding in grain stacks; assistance from Polish peasants, including her mother's childhood friend; convincing this friend to hide them; moving to his attic with ten relatives in fall 1942; being joined by four uncles; her youngest sister, a cousin, ...

  20. Sara C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sara C., who was born in Druysk, Russia in 1910. In two separate interviews Mrs. C. recalls her parents' deaths when she was a child; living with an aunt in Latvia; marriage at age nineteen; and her son's birth nine years later. She recounts arrival of the Germans; round-ups; ghettoization; her husband's disappearance in March 1943 (she later learned he was killed); hiding in the forests near Vilna with her son, then in a house with an old woman for one year, in a potato cellar and another place where they were infested with lice; her son dissuading her from surrender...