Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 48,001 to 48,020 of 55,889
  1. Fred H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Fred H., who was born in Stan?kov in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (presently Czech Republic) in 1906. He recounts his family's move to Plzen? in 1909; attending public school; his father's service in the first World War; his Austrian patriotism; the transition to Czechoslovakia; studying in Paris and Prague; accompanying a cousin to the United States in August 1938; deciding not to return after the Munich agreement; illegally living in Toronto and Montre?al; receiving a U.S. visa; traveling to London; meeting his mother and brother in Paris in August 1939; their emig...

  2. Wolf Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Wolf Z., who was born in Olkusz, Poland, in 1923 and raised in nearby Sosnowiec. Mr. Z. recalls the town's primitive conditions; Jewish prewar social and cultural life; rapid deterioration following the German invasion; ghettoization; and the suspicions about the deportations and construction of Auschwitz. He tells of hiding; capture in a 1942 round-up; transport to Sakrau, then to Karvina?, Czechoslovakia; work as a carpenter's helper; transfer to Klettendorf in 1943; work as a farm hand; and surviving on vegetables normally fed to pigs. He describes transport to Fu?...

  3. Alfred K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alfred K., who was born in Sighet, Romania in 1931 and raised in Oradea. He recalls Hungarian occupation; his father believing Polish refugee stories of German atrocities; German invasion in 1944; ghettoization; hiding with his parents and brother to avoid deportation; their former superintendent assisting their escape to unoccupied Romania; separation on the train (he stayed with his mother); his father's and brother's arrests; traveling to Arad, then Bucharest; returning home after the war; his father's insistence he learn a trade (watch making); illegally traveling...

  4. Paja L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paja L., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1921. Ms. L. remembers working in a kindergarten; Soviet occupation; Lithuanian independence; German invasion; her father being seized from the street; anti-Jewish restrictions; ghettoization; moving into a friend's residence in the designated area; continuing to work with children; food shortages; joining a partisan group; meetings in cafes, which included literary talks by Abraham Sutzkever and Szmerke Kaczerginski; a friend offering to pretend she was his wife to save her from selection; remaining with her mother rather tha...

  5. Ada F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ada F., who was born in Opalin, Poland (now Ukraine), in 1919. Mrs. F. describes her happy childhood in a rabbi's family; holiday observances; her family's disbelief about German antisemitic persecution in the late 1930s; the German invasion; separation from her family while on a train which was bombed en route to Che?m; and escaping with a girlfriend from the Che?m ghetto. She recalls hiding with other Jews in forest bunkers; betrayal by Poles; transport to a labor camp in ?o?dz?; witnessing atrocities; transfer to Auschwitz in November 1944; and liberation. She reme...

  6. Jan F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jan F., who was born in Trnava, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1930, an only child. He recalls his family's assimilated lifestyle; attending public school in Piešt̕any; passing the admissions exams for gymnasium, but finding Jews were barred; attending a Jewish school; deportation of his mother's family in 1942 by the Hlinka guard; moving to Bratislava; hiding with non-Jews; composing crossword puzzles, for which he was paid; his father arranging for their conversion to evangelical Christianity in August; attending an evangelic school; hiding during the Slova...

  7. Gerhart R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gerhart R., who was born in Berlin. He discusses his pre-1933 career as a junior lawyer and state employee in Berlin; his dismissal when Hitler came to power; his departure from Germany in 1933; and his post as legal secretary for the newly created World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Geneva. He relates his struggle for the rights of the Danzig Jews; the successful WJC campaign in 1938 against the anti-Semitic government of Romania; his responsibility to inform WJC officials in Geneva and New York of wartime atrocities; and his sources of information about Nazi medical expe...

  8. Franz B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Franz B., a non-Jew, who was born in Péruwelz, Belgium in 1924. He recalls moving to Congo in 1932, where his father was a gold miner; his mother's death nine days after giving birth to his younger sister; returning to Belgium with his sister in 1935; living with his maternal aunt; attending school in Mons; German invasion in May 1940; military draft; transport to Toulouse; working on a farm for three months; repatriation in August; returning to school; joining the Resistance in October 1941; distributing flyers at night; working as an engineer in a chemical company ...

  9. Herbert F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Herbert F., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1929, an only child. He recalls attending public school; antisemitic harassment; German occupation in March 1938; expulsion from school; observing violence against Jews; traveling with his parents and uncle to Cologne, Aachen, then Breda; being smuggled to Belgium; attending school in Antwerp; German invasion on May 10, 1940; his father's arrest; traveling with his mother and uncle to Toulouse; his uncle's arrest (he escaped and went to the United States); his mother placing him with a Jewish farmer in Fontenilles; his fa...

  10. Bessie and Jacob K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Bessie K. and Jacob K. Mr. K. was born in Zwolen?, Poland in 1923. Mr. K. describes his childhood in a close-knit, observant family; celebration of Jewish holidays; social closeness of the community; attending a Polish school; anti-Semitic incidents; the beginning of the war; and the destruction caused by bombing, including his home. He recounts increasing tension; anti-Jewish legislation; forced labor; extreme hunger and hardship; atrocities committed against the Jews; the final deportation from Zwolen? (which he and his brothers avoided); their work in Zwolen? clean...

  11. Miriam A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Miriam A., who was born in Suchdol, Czechoslovakia (presently Czech Republic) in 1923, the youngest of three children. She recounts being the only Jewish family in town; a happy childhood; cordial relations with non-Jews; attending school in Kutná Hora; antisemitic harassment by teachers; attending boarding schools where they did not know she was Jewish until March 1939; German occupation; visiting Jewish friends in neighboring Kolín; anti-Jewish laws, including travel bans and confiscation of her father's business; hiding valuables with non-Jewish friends, includin...

  12. Norris B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Norris B., who was drafted into the United States infantry at age eighteen and sent to France in January 1945. He recalls moving through France and Germany; serving as a rifleman and interpreter; interviewing captured German prisoners; vague knowledge of concentration camps; stumbling across prisoners in very bad condition, then entering Gunskirchen; giving what little food they had to the prisoners; shock at piles of corpses and conditions in the camp; realizing many prisoners would not survive due to their debilitated condition; local civilians claiming no knowledge...

  13. Ida I. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ida I., one of seven children, who was born in Romania in 1919. She recalls her family's orthoodox lifestyle in Bistrit?a; increasing antisemitism; Hungarian occupation; conscription of Jewish men; transport to a collection site in a forest; deportation to Auschwitz; seeing her father for the last time; a translator explaining the true situation while pretending to repeat German words; and sharing food with her sister. Mrs. I. describes their transport to Augsburg, Germany; forced labor in a Messerschmitt factory; improved living conditions; observing Yom Kippur; rece...

  14. Esther K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Esther K., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1919. She recalls her large, extended family; attending public school; German invasion; marriage; ghettoization; working in a clothing factory; her father, two brothers, and a sister dying from starvation; deportations, including her mother and other siblings; transfer with her husband and a cousin to Auschwitz in 1944; separation from her husband (she never saw him again); and the public shooting of her pregnant cousin. Mrs. K. recounts transfer after six weeks to Bergen-Belsen, then Salzwedel; forced labor in a munitions ...

  15. Victor C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Victor C. (accompanied by his daughter Belinda) who was born in Strzemieszyce Wielke, Poland in 1914. He relates his father's death; the family's move to Sosnowiec; extreme poverty; his mother's efforts to raise and educate four sons; studying in Krako?w; being drafted into the Polish army in 1939; being taken as a prisoner-of-war; and his escape. He describes returning to Strzemieszyce; his marriage; the birth of his child; ghetto conditions and organization; transfer with his family to Be?dzin; forced labor; transfers to many camps; the variety of conditions and org...

  16. Rita K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rita K., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1935. She recalls being in their summer home when Germany invaded; living in the Piotrko?w ghetto; hiding with her sister outside the ghetto with assistance from family friends in 1941-1942; returning to her parents in the ghetto; cleaning up after the ghetto's liquidation; transfer with her family to a labor camp in 1943; separation from her father during a selection; deportation to Ravensbru?ck with her mother and sister in 1944; her mother stealing potatoes for them, without which they would not have survived; their transf...

  17. Jacob H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jacob H., who was born in Os?wie?cim, Poland in approximately 1924, one of five children. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; cordial relations with non-Jews; his mother's death a month prior to his bar mitzvah; German invasion; fleeing with his father by train to Krako?w, then walking east; their return home; forced labor cleaning barracks, then at German police headquarters; two German soldiers offering him papers as a non-Jew; his father's refusal to prevent their separation; moving with his father to Chrzano?w in early 1941 with assistance from a non-Jewish friend;...

  18. Jenny S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jenny S., who was born in 1926 in Vienna, Austria, an only child. She recalls an comfortable and happy life; warm Sabbath and holiday observances; changes, particularly after the Anchluss; her father's arrest and release; eviction from their apartment; her father's second arrest (she never saw him again); her mother registering her for emigration to the United States; leaving Vienna in May 1941; spending three days in Berlin with her mother and her friend Louise prior to leaving; their painful departure (she never saw her again); traveling with Louise; a ship voyage f...

  19. Dolly H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Dolly H., who was born in Thessalonike?, Greece in 1928. She recounts that her father was Turkish by birth, worked in Greece, and married her mother there; attending a French school until 1940; anti-Jewish regulations including expulsion from school (of twenty-three Jews in her class, only she and one other survived); ghettoization; her father advising friends not to obey German regulations; his Armenian friend arranging train tickets and false papers for them to escape to Italian-occupied Larisa; living there and in Volos; encountering a lawyer who arranged better pa...