Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 6,221 to 6,240 of 10,181
  1. Otto L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Otto L., who was born in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland in 1909 and raised in Konstanz, Germany. He recounts his family's long history in Germany and Switzerland; his parents' non-involvement with Judaism; active participation in gymnastics, swimming, and scouting; never experiencing antisemitism until an encounter with a non-local scout group; his bar mitzvah; an apprenticeship in Nuremberg for two years; friendship with a police officer who provided him with information that later saved his life; working in Bochum for thirteen months, then for his father; a job in Augsbur...

  2. Elizabeth M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Elizabeth M., who was born in Othmarschen, Germany in 1921, the first child of her father's second wife. She recalls her father's career as a prominent attorney; her close relationship with her younger sister and their nanny (with whom she remained in contact and who saved some of their parents' possessions for them); increasing anti-Jewish restrictions; attending school in Switzerland; one half-brother's emigration to England and another's to Palestine; her half-sister's emigration to Peru; and her father being arrested twice. Mrs. M. describes being registered with ...

  3. Dorothy L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Dorothy L., who was born in Bremen, Germany in 1923. Mrs. L. recalls her close family; moving to Budapest; their happy life in a milieu of high culture; returning to Bremen in 1933; the forced sale of the family home; a German friend who helped them a great deal; her emigration to the United States on a children's transport in September 1938; and emotional difficulties living with families who seemed cold to her. She notes her brother and sister emigrated to England and learning from them about the trauma of Kristallnacht and her parents' and older sister's deportatio...

  4. Jacob G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jacob G., who was born in 1910 and grew up in Warsaw. He recalls his father's death when he was twelve; working to help support his family; his mother's death two years later; joining a trade union in 1924, then a Communist youth group; imprisonment for five years for his political activities; escaping arrest in 1938 by entering Belgium with forged papers; connecting with a Jewish communist group; feelings of betrayal after the German/Soviet pact; German invasion; his and his wife's active involvement with the Resistance; her deportation to Auschwitz; being shot durin...

  5. Tyla R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Tyla R., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1903, one of nine children. She recalls attending high school; her father's death at the end of World War I; moving to Paris in 1931 to escape antisemitism; marriage to a friend from Warsaw; a visit to her family in Poland; her daughter's birth in 1938; German occupation in 1940; and the helpfulness shown to Jews by the French. She tells of compulsory registration of all Jews in 1941; French people hiding her daughter in Normandy; hiding with her husband and others from a round-up on July 14; her daughter's return to Paris; h...

  6. Simon B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Simon B., who was born in Berlin in 1909. Mr. B. recalls his family's close relationship with the non-Jewish family who lived in the apartment above his; his father's military service during the first World War; quitting school in order to help his ailing father with the family business; his attempt to emigrate to Israel; and the totally transformed attitude of his German "friends" after 1933. He describes anti-Jewish measures to which he was subjected; Kristallnacht; hiding from the police; being smuggled, with his wife, into Belgium, and arranging for his parents to...

  7. Peter H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Peter H., who was born in 1920 in Hannover, Germany. He recounts his parents' divorce; being raised by a Catholic governess; his bar mitzvah; anti-Jewish laws; expulsion from school in 1936; apprenticeship in a Jewish-owned chemical factory; the factory's expropriation; losing his job; studying chemistry privately in Berlin; working as a chemist; Kristallnacht;, obtaining visas with his mother and brother at the American Consulate in Hamburg; visiting relatives in Cologne and Amsterdam; emigration to the United States in 1939; learning his father had emigrated to Thai...

  8. Eve F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eve F., who was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1923. She recalls the prewar emigration to the United States of many members of her mother's family; her own identity as both German and Jew; the edict barring Jewish children from schools and the increasingly tense atmosphere in her own school; the belief held by many Jews that Hitler's antisemitism was temporary; and learning of the deportation of Communists to concentration camps as early as 1933. She relates emigrating with her family to New Orleans in December 1933; the assimilated life styles of her relatives...

  9. Abraham L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Abraham L., who was born in Sinyavka, Russia (presently Belarus) in 1918, the youngest of three children. He recalls attending cheder and a Polish school; learning carpentry at age fourteen; antisemitic harassment and boycotts; Soviet occupation in 1939; draft into the Soviet military; German invasion in 1941; Soviet retreat; hiding in a forest; transfer to a munitions factory where he worked as a carpenter; moving to Tashkent; traveling to Baranovichy after the war; learning of the extermination of Jews, including his own family; living in Szczecin; not returning to ...

  10. Henri D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henri D., who was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1930, one of three children. He recalls his family's affluence; attending a Jewish school; German bombardment on May 10, 1940; his parents paying and collecting all their debts; their flight with his uncle's family to Dunkerque, Paris, then Lacanau Océan; attending school; his father and uncle obtaining visas; traveling to Portugal; departing from Lisbon to the United States a month later; and joining relatives in New York. Mr. D. discusses the importance of luck to his and his family's survival; learning in the 1980s th...

  11. Geoffrey H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Professor Geoffrey H., a distinguished literary scholar and advisor to Holocaust testimony projects, who was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929. He tells of assimilated relatives; curiosity about Nazi flags and parades; antisemitic restrictions; placement at age seven in a boy's home supported by the Rothschilds, where his divorced mother thought he would be safer; his mother's departure for America in late 1938; evacuation on a children's transport in March 1939; and arrival with nineteen other boys at the James Rothschild estate in Waddesdon, England. He speaks of ...

  12. Aron S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Aron S., who was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1928. He describes his parents' backgrounds; his father's decision not to return to Germany from a business trip abroad when Hitler came to power in 1933; traveling with his mother, brother, and sister to Antwerp to join his father; a happy period in Antwerp; German invasion in 1940; fleeing with his family to Brussels, then to France; returning to Antwerp after unsuccessful attempts to find his father whom they lost along the way; his father's return; hiding in Brussels to avoid deportation; fleeing to Paris; and...

  13. Alfi N. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alfi N., who was born in London, England in 1923. He describes his childhood in an affluent family; joining Habonim when he was eleven; attending technical school; active participation in Hechalutz; working at a kibbutz with young Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria; joining the British military in 1940; fighting throughout Europe; attending a Gordonyah meeting in liberated Brussels; contacts with the Jewish brigade; entering Bergen-Belsen; posing as a Polish soldier in an attempt to locate relatives in other camps; associating himself with the Palmah? to smuggle...

  14. Elfi E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Elfi E., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1927. She remembers living with her grandparents (her parents were divorced); a close relationship with her twin brother; being attacked by Hitler youth; Kristallnacht; her mother's decision to send her and her brother to Belgium to join their father; the paid smuggler abandoning them in Aachen; their father finding them; placement with foster families; missing her brother; briefly seeing her mother who was emigrating to London; placement in an orphanage in Middelkerke; evacuation to an orphanage in Brussels during German in...

  15. Ilse A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ilse A., who was born in Gelsenkirchen, Germany circa 1922. She recalls a happy childhood; Hitler's ascent to power in 1933; one brother's emigration to Australia; anti-Jewish laws resulting in expulsion from school; her family's move to Amsterdam; discrimination because she was German; a dressmaker's apprenticeship; German invasion; anti-Jewish measures despite sympathy from the Dutch; her grandmother's deportation; her father learning they were to be deported; contacting the underground; receiving false papers; being transported to Apeldoorn with her parents (her br...

  16. Eduard T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eduard T., who was born in Rotterdam in 1916. He recalls his secular childhood; learning of German antisemitism from German-Jewish refugees; antisemitism from Dutch Nazis; his father's death in 1937; his mother's emigration; German invasion; attending radio school; living in Utrecht with anti-Nazi students; working for a friend in Voorburg; obtaining false papers; hiding in several different houses; narrow escapes; moving to the Hague; staying with several families, including a socialist and a Dutch Calvinist; war's end; reunion with his brother (he had been in hiding...

  17. Maks B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Maks B., who was born in Frankfurt, Germany in approximately 1920. He recalls the successful family store; attending a Jewish school; antisemitic harassment; his bar mitzvah; his father hiding when Nazis came for him; a family meeting at which many, at his father's urging, decided to leave for Palestine (most who remained were killed); traveling to Palestine via Italy; his mother's death five years later; his father's remarriage; intending to visit relatives in Europe in 1939; leaving the ship to return to Tel Aviv upon learning policies against Jews in Palestine; joi...

  18. Lois and Abraham J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lois J., who was born in a small town near Vilna, Poland in 1927, and her husband Abraham J., who was born in a small town in Poland in 1921. Mrs. J. discusses prewar Jewish life in her home town; the Russian occupation in 1939; the German takeover in 1941 and the ensuing anti-Jewish legislation; ghettoization of her town and conditions under German rule; and her escape into the forest, where she lived with a group of 300 partisans and refugees from other ghettos. Mr. J. describes family life before the war; the displacement of his family following Russian occupation;...

  19. Ruth L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ruth L., who was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1936. She recounts frequent visits to her grandparents in Cologne; Kristallnacht; emigration to Amsterdam; her brother's birth; German invasion in 1940; attending a Jewish school; anti-Jewish restrictions; hiding during round-ups; a non-Jewish neighbor arranging for her and her brother to be hidden with non-Jews in December 1942; occasional visits with her parents; arrest in September 1943; transfer to the central gathering site for Jews; her brother's hospitalization for polio; being smuggled out; hiding with non-Jews in T...

  20. Leica B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leica B., who was born in Kishinev, Russia (presently Chișinău, Moldova) in 1906. She recounts visiting her uncle in prison in Saint Petersburg; attending secular and Bundist schools; her sister's emigration to Paris; Kishinev becoming part of Romania; emigration to Paris in 1929; expulsion due to leftist activities; illegally living in Brussels; marriage; becoming a citizen; birth of a son and daughter; German invasion; placing her daughter in a convent and her son in a health care facility; working for the Resistance hiding children; visiting her children once a m...