Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 44,101 to 44,120 of 55,889
  1. Joan B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joan B., who was born in Mainz, Germany. She describes the growth of antisemitism in Nazi Germany; Kristallnacht, which resulted in the deaths of her father and mother; and her experiences as a slave laborer in Theresienstadt, where her first husband and entire immediate family perished. She also describes Auschwitz; various slave labor camps in Germany; and Bergen-Belsen, from which she was liberated. Other topics include the ways in which she attempted to undermine the German war effort while in concentration and labor camps; her postwar life in Belsen, where she wo...

  2. Edith P. edited testimony

    Edith P., a survivor from eastern Czechoslovakia, relates her wartime experiences in an emotionally powerful and unusually poetic way. She tells of her family's evacuation to a brick factory, their train journey to Auschwitz, and their separation upon arrival. She describes her life in Auschwitz and later in Salzwedel, where she worked as a cook for the SS. Ms. P. recounts the joy of liberation by American soldiers and concludes by expressing her distress at her own, and the world's complacency while suffering and inhumanity continue.

  3. Sofiia Y. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sofiia Y., who was born in Raygorodok, Ukraine in 1922. She recalls attending schools in Yanushpolʹ and Tetërka; Soviet authorities destroying the local synagogue; her brother's death during the famine; German invasion; forced labor; forced relocation into dilapidated apartments; non-Jewish friends bringing them food; escaping a mass shooting in September 1941 with assistance from non-Jews; hiding for two days; learning her parents had survived; slave labor clearing snow from roads; she and her father escaping liquidation of all the Jews in a mass killing (her mother...

  4. Richard R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Richard R., who was born in Radom, Poland in 1935. He recalls his family's affluent life in Zwolen?; his father's position as head of the hospital in Radom; German invasion; fleeing east with his parents; living under Soviet occupation in Li?u?boml?; German invasion; antisemitic violence; going into hiding five weeks later with a farmer; leaving after thirteen months when their money ran out; their arrest; transport to the Lublin ghetto, then to a labor camp; being smuggled out by Polish partisans because they needed a doctor; living with his mother on a farm disguise...

  5. Morris K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Morris K., who was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1922. He recalls his father's successful business; entering college in 1940; Soviet occupation; German invasion in June 1941; anti-Jewish violence; ghettoization; mass killings, including some relatives; forced labor at a military airfield; participation in the underground; one brother being captured, assigned to disinter bodies from mass graves, escaping into the ghetto, and then to the partisans (he survived); transfer with his parents and another brother to Kauen-Schanzen; becoming friendly with his future wife; spont...

  6. Phyllis S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Phyllis S., who was born in Chrzano?w, Poland in 1927. She recalls her two sisters and brother; manifestations of antisemitism in the late 1930s; German invasion in 1939; ghettoization; her brother's deportation in 1940; her deportation to Struthof in 1941; forced labor in a textile factory; transfer to Flossenbu?rg in 1943, then to Bergen-Belsen in February 1945; stealing food to survive; and liberation by British troops. Mrs. S. describes hospitalization for several months; living in Feldafing; learning her brother was alive in Austria; marriage in 1948; her son's b...

  7. Jan K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jan K., a non-Jewish Pole, who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1914. He recalls working as a diplomatic courier for the Polish government in exile during the war; receiving messages from Jewish leaders who wanted the Polish government in London and the Allies to know what was happening to Jews in Poland; secretly entering the Warsaw ghetto with Leon Feiner, a Bund leader, as his guide; returning a second time; Feiner arranging for him to be smuggled into a camp; traveling to a village via Lublin; being provided with a guard's uniform by his guide; becoming overwhelmed b...

  8. Serge L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Serge L., who was born in Skierniewice, Poland in 1922. He recounts his family's communist background; antisemitic incidents; emigrating to Paris in 1936; the outbreak of war in 1939; enlistment in the army (he was not mobilized); resistance activities; deportation with his brother to Beaune-la-Rolande on May 14, 1941; escaping to Paris with assistance from a French woman; voluntarily returning to Beaune-la-Rolande to protect his father; deportation to Auschwitz on June 28, 1942; building the I.G. Farben Buna factory in Monowitz; assistance from a Polish doctor in the...

  9. Helen N. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Helen N., who was born in Rona de Sus, Romania in 1921, one of eleven children. She recalls her family's traditional religious life; working in Sa?pi?nt?a as a dressmaker; violent Hungarian soldiers; food shortages; declining an offer to be hidden by friends; ghettoization with her parents, one sister, and brother in Oradea; their deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her parents (she never saw them again); efforts to remain with her sister; her brother's instructions to eat non-kosher food in order to survive (she never saw him again); being beaten for having a n...

  10. Fanny K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Fanny K., who was born in Pilipets, Czechoslovakia in 1922. She recalls her father traveling as a shochet; many older brothers and sisters; Hungarian occupation; her brothers' draft into Hungarian labor battalions; regulations forbidding Jews to run stores; helping her sister secretly run a store; brief arrest; hiding with relatives in another town; returning home and hiding; ghettoization; a forced march to Khust; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from everyone but one sister; seeing her brother once from a distance; slave labor in a weaving mill; attempting to ob...

  11. Hermine M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hermine M., who was born in a small town in Czechoslovakia, one of eight children. She recalls attending Czech school; visiting relatives in Antwerp; Germany's occupation of the Sudetenland; her parents' decision that she remain in Belgium; German invasion; fleeing to Brussels; separation from her relatives because of her Czech citizenship; a Czech family befriending her and bringing her with them to a French town near the Spanish border; being placed in a convent by the Czech underground; arrest and incarceration in Aix-en-Provence; hospitalization for appendicitis; ...

  12. Zdenka K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Zdenka K., who was born in Rochov, Czechoslovakia in 1922. She recalls forced relocation with her parents and sister to Kladno in 1942; their deportation to Theresienstadt; forced labor; receiving extra food from their Christian aunt; their train transport to Raasiku, Estonia; separation from their parents (they never saw them again); slave labor in Ja?gala and Kohtla-Ja?rve; incarceration in Tallinn and Reval; cleaning up bombing rubble; evacuation to a site in the woods, then another camp; becoming numb due to arduous conditions, starvation, and beatings; ship trans...

  13. Frances L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Frances L., who served in the United States Army Nurses Corps beginning in July 1941. She recalls postings in Oran, Algeria in the fall of 1942 via Birmingham, England, then Palermo, Italy; attending a dance hosted by General Patton; caring for wounded soldiers, including Germans, behind 7th Army lines in Italy, France and Germany; finding American soldiers who had been tortured and mutilated; and volunteering to administer anti-typhus injections in Dachau two weeks after its liberation. Mrs. L. describes the complete debilitation of the inmates; difficulty injecting ...

  14. Heinz P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Heinz P., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1911. He recalls his apprenticeship and employment in a bank; the anti-Jewish boycott in 1933; his brother's emigration to South America; co-workers suddenly shunning him; dismissal from his job in February 1937; working for his father's business associate in Kitzingen; arrest on Kristallnacht; imprisonment in Dachau for three months; his release; and departure for Shanghai a few days later. Mr. P. recounts living outside the Jewish area; starting a photography business with a friend; corresponding with his father who wrote...

  15. Molly K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Molly K., who was born in Augusto?w, Poland in 1925. She relates moving to Vilna at age three; attending Catholic school until fourth grade, then Jewish high school; prevalent antisemitism; German invasion; learning of mass murders of Jews at Ponary from a woman who escaped; ghettoization; forced labor in the H.K.P. camp; receiving medication from a Jewish doctor when she became ill; escape with her fiance; being hidden by a former teacher, then by a Polish neighbor, in a bunker in her family's former home; and liberation by Soviet troops. Mrs. K. recalls seeking surv...

  16. Edith K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Edith K., who was born in 1929, in Va?c, Hungary, the oldest of four children. She recalls a close and large extended family; pervasive antisemitism; her family's orthodoxy; Austrian cousins arriving after Kristallnacht; uncles serving in Hungarian slave labor battalions; hiding Czech cousins; her uncles' return in early 1944; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; removal of all men for slave labor; receiving letters from her father (she still has some); forced relocation to a brick factory in Monor; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation from her mother a...

  17. Lisa O. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lisa O., a non-Jew, who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1922. She recalls street fights between brown shirts and communists; playing with Jewish children; improved conditions after Hitler came to power; participating in the opening ceremony for the 1936 Olympics; saying goodbye to their Jewish doctor in 1938 when he emigrated; synagogue and book burnings; her mother's work with Martin Niemo?ller; being told Dachau was for those who wanted to harm the Reich; observing a sign forbidding Jews when vacationing in Baden-Baden; training as a teletypist in Giessen; volunteeri...

  18. Rena R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rena R., who was born in Krako?w, Poland in 1917. She recounts her family's affluence and orthodoxy; her mother's death; her father's remarriage; marriage in 1936; her daughter's birth in 1937; anti-Jewish boycotts; one sister's emigration to Palestine; vacationing in Zakopane in summer 1939; German invasion; returning to Krako?w; moving to a village; her sister and mother-in-law joining her; a policeman warning them of a deportation; hiding in a barn for three weeks; walking to the Krako?w ghetto; hiding her daughter with her maid; slave labor in a uniform factory; d...

  19. Ruth W. and Maryann L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ruth W., who was active in New York in the wartime relief efforts of the Congregational Church, and her daughter, Maryann L., who has helped lead church groups through Germany since the war. Mrs. W. describes her work with refugees in Europe and the United States, including the rescue network operated by the churches, and the difficulty in assigning responsibility for the refugees. Mrs. L. discusses her group trips to Germany, noting the desolation that characterized Warsaw and Berlin. Both speak of their reactions during a visit to Dachau, of bringing information bac...

  20. Meir S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Meir S., who was born in Na?sa?ud, Romania in 1925 to a family with fourteen children. He describes his father, a biblical scribe; his very religious upbringing; moving to a small village in Hungary as a young child; German occupation, ghettoization, and transfer of all Jews to another town; his father's humiliation at having to shave his beard; and transport to Auschwitz. Mr. S. recalls the treatment of the prisoners as numbers, not humans; not knowing what happened to his family and not being able to comprehend that he was in a death camp; volunteering as a mechanic...