Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 43,641 to 43,660 of 55,889
  1. John L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of John L., who was born in 1925 and served with the United States Army 45th Infantry Division in World War II. He recalls participating in several major battles; approaching Dachau on April 29, 1945; railroad cars overflowing with emaciated corpses outside the camp; the soldiers' responses, including silence, disbelief, tears, and anger; capturing Wehrmacht and SS troops; observing inmates killing German guards; "ghostlike" inmates emerging from barracks; piles of dead bodies; the sickening stench; and advancing toward Munich the next day. Mr. L. notes he was totally un...

  2. Hanoch V. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hanoch V., who was born in Vilna, Poland (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1920, the oldest of five children. He recounts attending a Jewish school; antisemitic harassment; working in a leather store; active participation in Hashomer Hatzair (Abba Kovner was his group's leader); Lithuanian independence; fleeing briefly to relatives in Lida and Maladzechna; returning home; German invasion; killing of Jews; fleeing to Ashmi︠a︡ny; returning when he was caught; ghettoization; forced labor in a dairy factory; smuggling food; obtaining a pistol; participating in the organiz...

  3. Nina K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Nina K., a non-Jew, who was born in 1923 in Malines (Mechelen), Belgium. She describes involvement with the Resistance from the beginning of the war; working as a courier between Brussels and Malines; arrest in June 1942; imprisonment in Antwerp for six weeks; transfer to Aachen, then Essen; sabotaging her assigned work; discussing survival strategies with friends; transfer to Zweibru?cken, then Esterwegen; her trial; being sentenced to forced labor; transfer to Gross Strehlitz; an aborted escape attempt with a friend; being helped in solitary confinement by a friend'...

  4. Martin S. Holocaust testimony

    A follow-up, directed videotape testimony of Martin S., whose first testimony was recorded in 1986. Mr. S. notes his first testimony was primarily for his children; hope that future scholars can discover the basis for extreme cruelty; meaninglessness of time in concentration camps; being kept alive in Skarz?ysko as a model factory worker because he ran so many machines at once; an SS officer saving his mother and brother to reward him, but randomly killing others; believing "they made an animal out of" him which still governs much of his present behavior; becoming completely introverted, ob...

  5. Renee G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Renee G., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1923. She recalls her happy youth; German invasion; ghettoization; hiding in bunkers; her parents' deportation to Treblinka in 1940; living with her brother and posing as his wife; hiding in a chimney during a round-up; her brother's arrest; joining the underground; arrest with her sister while hiding in a bunker following the Warsaw ghetto uprising; two days on the Umschlagplatz followed by deportation with her sister to Majdanek; slave labor and selections; transport to a HASAG ammunition factory, then to Leipzig at the en...

  6. Girsh K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Girsh K., who was born in Minsk, Russia in 1914, the fourth of seven children. He recounts his family moving to Moscow in 1916 to avoid the German invasion; returning to Minsk in 1918; hardships under German and Polish invasions; attending a Jewish school; Soviet elimination of Jewish cultural and religious institutions in the 1930s; training as an engineer in Moscow; working in a shoe factory in Minsk; his brothers serving in the military; German occupation; ghettoization with his parents and sisters; round-up of all Jewish men; a mass shooting of all professionals i...

  7. Leon B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leon B., who was born in Thessalonike?, Greece in approximately 1915. He recalls his large family; attending Italian school; working with his father and uncle; deteriorating conditions beginning from July 1942; the Jewish community raising funds to ransom people from labor camps; ghettoization in February 1943; the role of the Judenrat and its president, Rabbi Zvi Koretz; deportations beginning in March 1943; his family's arrival at Auschwitz/Birkenau on May 2; separation from his parents; slave labor paving a road; transfer a month later to Zgoda (S?wie?toch?owice); ...

  8. Nachman Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Nachman Z., who was born in Łęczyca, Poland in 1918, one of eight children. He recalls attending cheder; his brothers moving to Łódź; joining them with the rest of his family in 1933; joining Betar; attending their summer camp; working with his brothers in Ruda Pabianicka; German invasion in 1939; fleeing with his brothers as far as Pszczonów; hiding there briefly, then returning to Łódź; entrusting some of their valuables with two non-Jews; forced labor for a day in Kochanówka; a German warning him of a round-up; hiding with a friend; ghettoization in May 1940...

  9. Albert E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Albert E., who was born in Slavonski Brod, Yugoslavia in 1929 and was raised in Zagreb. He recalls expulsion from gymnasium in 1941 due to the anti-Jewish laws of newly independent Croatia; his father's deportation to Jasenovac (they never saw him again); a Croatian neighbor alerting them that the Ustaša were looking for them; he, his mother, and sister hiding with Croat friends; returning home; hiding several more times; an uncle sending them false papers; moving to Mostar in the Italian-occupied area; Italians helping the Jews to leave, knowing the Ustaša would so...

  10. Vida K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Vida K., who lived in Thessalonikē, Greece. She recalls speaking Ladino and French; her father's death in 1936; marriage in 1938; her son's birth; the rabbi encouraging the Jews to cooperate with deportation orders; wanting to escape, but her husband's refusal; their round-up to the Baron de Hirsch quarter; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her son and husband upon arrival (she never saw them again); a Blockälteste giving her a privileged assignment to the kitchen because she spoke French; assignment to Block 10; working with her friend Beinvenida M. in the ...

  11. Leon J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leon J., who was born in Cze?stochowa, Russia (presently Poland) in 1916, one of seven children. He recalls attending public school; antisemitic harassment; living with his mother in Gdan?sk for business reasons for eighteen months; his bar mitzvah there; participating in Maccabi; draft into the Polish military in 1938; German invasion in September 1939; being taken as a prisoner of war by the Germans; his release, traveling to Warsaw, then home; ghettoization; one brother who did not "look Jewish" smuggling merchandise for the family butcher shop; forced labor in a m...

  12. David K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of David K., who was born in Praszka, Poland in 1921 and moved to Wielun? at age seven. He recalls his oldest brother's emigration to Palestine; German bombing of their home; fleeing to Piotrko?w Trybunalski, then Radom; Germans burning Jewish books and scrolls in Be?chato?w; returning home; forced labor clearing bombing rubble; deportation to Poznan?; slave labor building roads in Loebau, Z?abikowo, and Kreising for Organization Todt; transfer to Kreuzsee, then Eberswalde; slave labor in a munitions factory; assistance from one German guard; transfer to Auschwitz/Birken...

  13. Marcel D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Marcel D., who was born in Ans, Belgium in 1920, one of two children. He recounts his parents' staunch Catholicism; attending school in Liège; joining a socialist youth group in 1937; volunteering to fight in Spain; rejection due to his age, but working there with children in a refugee camp for two months in 1938; German invasion in 1940; fleeing with his brother to Aube; returning home; some of his friends wearing yellow stars to protest anti-Jewish measures; joining the Front de l'Indépendance; obtaining weapons; sabotaging phone and rail lines; his brother's arre...

  14. Gregor S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gregor S., the only survivor of a family of twenty-two, who grew up in Libau, Latvia. He speaks of his prewar life in a close-knit Hasidic family; his childhood education; his musical education in Vienna and his career as an opera singer (he is now a cantor.) He tells of his return from Switzerland to Latvia, shortly before the Russian occupation, where he was employed by the state opera; the rapidly worsening situation for the Jews following the German occupation; and the willing collaboration of the Latvians. He relates his internment in the large ghetto and, upon i...

  15. Klara B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Klara B., who was born in Sombor, Yugoslavia, one of two sisters. She recounts studying ballet with her father, who was head of the dance teachers and a choreographer; their move to Budapest when she was nine so she could study under a prominent teacher/choreographer; returning to Sombor a year later; continuing to study with her father; attending gymnasium; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; attending university in Zagreb; returning home; Hungarian occupation; antisemitic violence by Hungarian soldiers; giving private dance lessons to help support her family; German ...

  16. Moshe V. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Moshe V., who was born in Pinsk, Russia (presently Belarus), one of three children. He recalls his family's relative affluence; his father's career as a teacher and his mother's as a physician; attending cheder and a Russian primary school; his mother's death in 1924; attending gymnasium starting in 1926; private lessons from a rabbi; attending engineering school in Warsaw; antisemitic harassment; living and working at the orphanage of Janusz Korczak; a summer at Korczak's camp in Gocławek; Korczak's influence leading him to change from engineering to become Korczak's...

  17. George K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of George K., who was born in Katowice, Poland in 1926. He recalls his childhood in an assimilated home in Radomsko; increased antisemitism after 1938; the outbreak of war; fleeing with his parents to Lublin; returning to Radomsko; ghettoization; helping Jews forced into the ghetto from surrounding villages; hiding with his parents during the first action; worsening conditions; his parents' arrest; desperate attempts to escape, including to Warsaw; acquiring false papers; and traveling to Munich as a non-Jewish slave laborer. Dr. K. describes posing as a Polish fighter; ...

  18. Louise S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Louise S., who was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands in 1929. She recalls her extended family; their assimilated lifestyle; moving to Bussum; attending school in Amsterdam; plans to emigrate; German invasion prior to their departure date; fleeing to IJmuiden; returning home; anti-Jewish laws including expulsion from school; forced relocation to Amsterdam; attending a Jewish school; obtaining false papers; going into hiding in January 1943; hiding with a relative in Bussum who was connected to the resistance; being sent by herself to a family in Hilversum; transfer three ...

  19. Lipa T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lipa T. who was born in Dukla, Poland in 1926. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; antisemitic violence; attending Polish school and cheder; enjoying Shabbat and holiday observances; his parents both working; their relative affluence; his father's military draft; German invasion; forced relocation with his mother and sister to Rymano?w; returning home; finding all their possessions looted by neighbors; forced quarry labor; his father's return after Germany invaded the Soviet Union; being sent to Krako?w with the quarry workers (he never saw his family again); slave lab...