Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 21 to 40 of 116
Language of Description: German
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Hélène A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hélène A., who was born in Sevluš, Czechoslovakia (presently Vynohradiv, Ukraine) in 1926, one of seven children. She recounts a happy childhood; attending Czech public school; antisemitic harassment; Hungarian occupation in March 1939; her parents sending her with a sister to Budapest in 1942; working for a tailor; anti-Jewish restrictions; a Hungarian soldier from their hometown assisting them; obtaining false papers; hiding in their apartment during Allied bombings; denouncement; arrest and interrogation; transfer to Gestapo custody; deportation to Kistarcsa; re...

  2. Leonard B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leonard B., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1926. He recalls his father's high position in a German company and his mother's as a school principal; living with his grandparents due to his parents' work situations; attending a private school; German invasion; closure of all schools; moving with his parents and grandparents to the ghetto area; an uncle being summoned by the Gestapo (they never saw him again); his aunt working in the hospital; his mother arranging a tutor for him in their home; hospitalization three times; his aunt saving him from a hospital deportatio...

  3. Henri M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henri M., a non-Jew, who was born in Saverne, France in 1920. He recalls attending school with Jews; his family's strong French patriotism; learning German in Berlin; studying in Strasbourg and Nancy; German invasion; military draft in June 1940; capture; escape from a POW center; traveling to Paris and Dijon; living in Saverne; studying in Heidelberg; arrest and escape; returning clandestinely to France with the help of French and Austrian Resistance members; studying law in Clermont-Ferrand; anti-Petain sentiments among students; Resistance work in the unoccupied zo...

  4. Kurt S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Kurt S., who was born in Krefeld, Germany in 1924. He recalls being barred from university in 1938 due to anti-Jewish restrictions; working on a Jewish training farm in Silesia; Gestapo dissolution of the farm in 1941; returning to Krefeld; and transport with his parents to the Ri?ga ghetto in December. Mr. S. describes unloading ships; refusing a ship captain's offer to smuggle him to Denmark in order to remain with his parents; work details in Ri?ga, Salaspils, Kaiserwald and other places; frequent deaths from starvation, hangings, and shootings; narrowly escaping e...

  5. Lisbeth B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lisbeth B., who was born in Posen, Germany (presently Poznan?, Poland) in 1911. She recounts living in a small village; moving to Berlin for safety during World War I; returning to Posen which became Poland; attending a German school; her father's death in 1928; working as a tutor and in a German publishing house; assisting Jews deported from Germany in 1938; participating in Zionist organizations; German invasion in 1939; deportation in December to Ostro?w Lubelski; traveling to Warsaw; working as a tutor; her mother declining a non-Jew's offer to hide them; ghettoiz...

  6. Fanny G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Fanny G., who was born in Paris, France in 1921 to Polish immigrants. She recalls her three brothers; moving with her family to Cantal in 1940, then to Lyon; resistance activities with the MUR; visiting her parents and brothers who were hiding in Savoie; arrest in June 1944; imprisonment in Montluçon; Gestapo torture and beatings; friendships with prisoners that endure to the present; transfer to Drancy; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in August; frequent appels and selections; transfer with friends to Krautau; slave labor in an airplane factory; sabotaging the par...

  7. Bernard O. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Bernard O., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1937, an only child. He recalls his familys' affluence; their insistence he speak only Polish; German invasion; his father's mother giving them gold coins; joining relatives in Warsaw; moving to the Piotrków ghetto; his mother obtaining false papers for herself and him; taking a train with her (his father was hidden with non-Jews); observing Gestapo inspecting papers; jumping off the train without their documents; entering the nearby Radom ghetto; his mother contacting his father; his father joining them; hiding during de...

  8. Nadine H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Nadine H., who was born in France in 1928. She relates living in Strasbourg; moving to Eure-et-loir with her mother when the war began; joining her father in Nancy in 1940; German invasion; fleeing with her mother to a village near Pau, then Vichy; living in Cusset from 1940 to 1941; moving to Valence, then Lyon in October 1941; arrest with her parents on May 13, 1944; Gestapo interrogations; incarceration in Montluc prison; transfer to Drancy; her parents meeting with Commander Brunner; and deportation to Auschwitz in May 1944. Dr. H. recounts her father's last words...

  9. Claire S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Claire S., who was born in Germany, the oldest of four children of Polish émigrés. She recounts her family's move to Brussels; attending school; working at fourteen to help support her family; joining the Bund; her father's arrest for debt resulting in his deportation to Germany; obtaining money to secure his return; German invasion; one brother hiding in a monastery; anti-Jewish restrictions; marriage in 1942; obtaining false papers; her sister's deportation; bribing officials to free an underground member from the Gestapo; her father's round-up and deportation; ar...

  10. Rolf F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rolf F., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1916. He recounts his father was a German industrialist and his mother the daughter of a Jew who had converted in 1908 (she was baptized and raised as a Christian); half siblings from his father's previous two marriages, the first to a non-Jew, the second to his mother's sister (both wives had died); not knowing he was legally Jewish until his expulsion from school in 1933; attending technical school in Mittweida because he was barred from university; draft into a forced labor battalion; returning to school after his release...

  11. Samuel W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Samuel W., who was born in Krako?w, Poland in 1913. He recalls attending a Polish school; cordial relations with non-Jews; picketing of Jewish stores; German invasion; being arrested with Poles and Jews in early September 1939; detention at Gestapo headquarters, then Montelupich prison; release of the non-Jewish prisoners; transfer to Troppau; encountering Gustaw Morcinek, a prominent Polish writer; transfer to Sachsenhausen some two years later; separation of Jews; a sadistic barrack commander; loss of toes due to severe cold; relations between prisoner groups; slave...

  12. Robert R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Robert R., who was born in Mellrichstadt, Germany in 1924. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; attending a Catholic school; antisemitic harassment; attending high school with his brother in Bad Neustadt an der Saale; increasing antisemitism; expulsion from school in 1937; attending a Jewish school; having to leave town for defending himself against an attack by Hitler Youth; being beaten by Nazis; apprenticeship with an uncle as a tailor; Kristallnacht; his father's and uncle's arrests; his arrest and deportation to Buchenwald; a fellow prisoner assisting him; standin...

  13. Beba L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Beba L., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1925, the oldest of four children. She recalls her father's emphasis on Jewish education; attending private school; aspiring to a university education; Soviet occupation; German invasion in June 1941; anti-Jewish restrictions; hearing about mass killings at Ponary; ghettoization in September 1941; her father arranging her escape with assistance from a Polish officer; obtaining false papers; hiding on a farm; returning to the ghetto to be with her parents, although she never saw her family again; working for the Judenrat; witne...

  14. Emmanuel F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Emmanuel F., who was born in 1922 in Kosiv, Poland (presently Ukraine), the oldest of six children. He recounts his family's affluence; attending engineering school in Warsaw beginning in 1936; German invasion; returning home; Soviet occupation; military draft; German invasion before he could report for duty; forced labor with his father and brothers in a brick factory; his father's death; selection as a mechanic (the rest of his family was deported or killed); transfer to Kuty; escaping with assistance from a German soldier; capture; escaping; joining partisans in fo...

  15. Jadwiga G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jadwiga G., who was born in Lublin, Poland in 1923, one of three children. Ms. G. recalls her family's affluence; attending Polish school; cordial relations with non-Jews; German invasion; ghettoization; moving to Melgiew in summer 1941; her future husband joining them; visiting friends and relatives in the Lublin ghetto; obtaining authentic documents as non-Jews; round-ups of Jews from nearby villages in October 1942; returning to Lublin; her father leaving en route when he was robbed and lost hope (she never saw him again); his non-Jewish, former employer arranging ...

  16. Jacques A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jacques A., who was born in Germany in 1923. He recounts his mother's family's long history in Germany; their flight from Wuppertal to Nancy in 1933 due to antisemitism; moving to Romainville in 1936; arrest in 1941 for beating a Nazi sympathizer; escaping to Nantes; obtaining false papers; learning of his family's arrest in October 1942; his arrest in Nantes in 1943 as a Resistant; Gestapo interrogations; transfer to Drancy; deportation to Auschwitz; slave labor in "Lagischa Gruben" (Lagisza Cmentarna); transfer to Birkenau in July 1944; contracting typhus; friends p...

  17. Charles P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Charles P., who was born in Olkusz, Poland in 1923. He relates his family's emigration to Palestine, then France in 1926; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; a printer's apprenticeship; German invasion; a futile attempt to join the Resistance in Poitiers; printing Resistance papers in his father's Paris print shop; fleeing to Lyon in 1943; acquiring false papers in Montluel; arrest by the Gestapo; declaring himself a Jew to avoid more torture in Montluc; transfer to Drancy; deportation to Birkenau; slave labor in coal mines in Jawischowitz; relations between prisoners ...

  18. Rachel S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rachel S., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1923, one of five children. She recalls cordial relations with non-Jews; German invasion in 1941; ghettoization; sneaking back to her former neighborhood and receiving food from non-Jewish neighbors; forced labor; her father losing his will to live; his refusal of an offer from a non-Jewish friend to hide their family; remaining in their apartment with one sister during a round-up (another sister and her parents were shot in a mass killing at Ponary); joining her brother who was hiding in a village; discovery; incarceration ...

  19. Henri E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henri E., who was born in Paris, France in 1916, one of five children. He recalls participating in organized sports; military service in 1937 in Metz; assignment to the Maginot Line in August 1939; retreating during the German invasion in 1940; being wounded; evacuation to Vichy; nineteen months hospitalization; activities for the Resistance while on furloughs from the hospital; meeting his sister in Clermont-Ferrand; participating in bombing Vichy government and Gestapo offices; his sister's arrest, then his on September 13, 1942; imprisonment in several places; a fa...

  20. Walter S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Walter S., who was born in Steinbach, Germany in 1924. He recalls living in Mannheim from 1931 on; his strong sense of German identity; expulsion from school; attending Jewish school; Kristallnacht; learning his father was in Dachau; moving to a kibbutz near Berlin hoping to emigrate to Palestine; and Gestapo takeover of the kibbutz. Mr. S. describes extreme hunger while harvesting crops for the Germans; transfer to several camps; observing the bombing of Berlin; transport to Auschwitz; selection for work in Buna; being shaved and tattooed (#117,022); illness; transfe...