Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 61 to 80 of 116
Language of Description: German
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Rabbi Abraham K. Holocaust testimony

    Video testimony of Rabbi Abraham K., who was born in Katowice, Poland in 1918. Rabbi K. describes his family; moving to Sosnowiec in 1942; formation of the ghetto; and deportation to Auschwitz with his fiancee's family. He relates conditions in Birkenau; interaction with other prisoners; being sick with typhus; selections; and being chosen for a special detail. Rabbi K. recalls transfer to Sachsenhausen, where forged English currency was inspected and sorted for a variety of uses by the German government. Rabbi K. recounts incidents of religious observance; working on a Gestapo archive whic...

  2. Viliam G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Viliam G., who was born in Hlohovec, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1923. He recalls his father was principal and taught in an orthodox school; increasingly severe restrictions on Jews under the Hlinka guard; his sister's deportation; his father's influence obtaining his (Viliam's) position sorting the confiscated property of deported Jews, thus exempting him from deportation until 1944; a non-Jewish woman hiding him after the arrival of German troops; arrest; interrogation by the Gestapo in Trenčin, then incarceration in Sered; deportation to Auschwitz/Birke...

  3. Fred O. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Fred O., who was born in Hrubieszo?w, Poland in 1909. He describes his family life; growing up in an anti-Semitic environment; medical school in Montpellier, France and the pleasure of being away from the atmosphere in Poland; being compelled to repeat his medical education in Warsaw; and the stress involved with the return to Poland. He recalls the German invasion; working as a doctor in the Warsaw ghetto; the pervasive lice and resulting typhus epidemic; extreme hunger; returning to Hrubieszo?w; treating a Gestapo agent, then watching him shoot children and old peop...

  4. Anna R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anna R., a Lutheran, who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1918. She recalls her family's commitment to and activities on behalf of the Social Democrats; the rise of fascism; her arrest for anti-Nazi activities; two one-year jail terms; release; helping found a home for children of suicides; hearing the Gestapo was seeking her; hiding; illegally entering Switzerland with assistance from the Communist Party; acceptance as a political refugee; meeting her future husband, a German-Jewish refugee; receiving contraband from an unknown source; arrest; learning she was pregnant...

  5. Edith G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Edith G., who was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1905 and adopted. She recalls living in Copenhagen; returning to Germany; her close family; marriage in 1928; and the births of her children. She describes her husband's arrest in 1935; his twenty-month incarceration; their move to Holland; German bombing of Rotterdam; moving to Zeist; not having to wear the yellow star, though her husband and children had to, because a Dutch policeman did not classify her as a Jew due to lack of information about her biological parents; arranging several hiding places for her children thr...

  6. Joseph W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph W., who was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1914. He recalls his parents' grocery business; their separation in 1931 (his father moved to Romania); celebrating religious holidays; attending business school; his belief that Nazi antisemitism would pass; Stuttgart's liberal atmosphere; exemption from wearing the yellow star due to his mother's Romanian citizenship; losing his job due to anti-Jewish laws; destruction of his mother's store during Kristallnacht; moving with his mother and sister into Jewish housing; working in a Jewish center processing emigration app...

  7. Abraham W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Abraham W., who was born in Drohobych, Ukraine (then Poland), in 1906. Mr. W. describes the roles of Leon Reich and David Herzog in his admission to university in Graz; his association with Nobel laureate Victor Hess; transfer to Charles University in Prague in 1931 due to antisemitism; becoming a pharmacist in Rava-Ru?ska in December 1939; learning of his mother's murder by a Ukrainian; ghettoization; friendship with the Pole selected by the Germans to replace him; and sheltering a woman escapee from a deportation train to nearby Belzec. He recalls a Gestapo operativ...

  8. Beba L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Beba L., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1925. She recounts her grandfather's partnership in Rom Publishing; attending private school; Soviet occupation; German invasion in June 1941; anti-Jewish restrictions; round-ups of people who never returned; ghettoization in September; being hidden with a non-Jewish family for three months; their priest's efforts to convert her (she did not care, if it led to her survival); visiting the ghetto, not intending to stay; finding her immediate family of seven gone; living with an aunt; receiving food from her former non-Jewish mai...

  9. Simon R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Simon R., who was born in Ozorko?w, Poland in 1916 to an orthodox family of six children. He recalls his family moving between Ozorko?w and ?owicz; working from age ten; disbelief that anything bad would occur; opening a store near Ozorko?w in 1939; German invasion; fleeing to Ozorko?w; learning the Gestapo was looking for him; hiding in a village; returning to Ozorko?w; and three months in jail in ?e?czyca. Mr. R. tells of his return to Ozorko?w; his brother's arrest; ghettoization; forced labor; the community saving a boy from public hanging for not wearing the yell...

  10. Ire?ne Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ire?ne Z., who recalls evacuation with her family from Paris to the Nie?vre region after the outbreak of war; her father's death; living in a village for a year; returning to Paris; working with her mother in their boutique; her older brother's arrest and deportation (they never saw him again); hiding on July 16, 1942; arrest of her mother and brother; unsuccessfully trying to join them in the Ve?lodrome d'Hiver; learning they were sent to Pithiviers; arranging to hide her twelve year old brother; acquiring false papers in Lyon; joining the Resistance as a courier in ...

  11. Paul S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paul S., who was born in Witten, Germany in 1925 of a Jewish father and Christian mother, who converted to Judaism. He recalls participation in Zionist organizations; one brother's emigration to Palestine; being hidden by non-Jewish neighbors on Kristallnacht; his father's imprisonment in Sachsenhausen; living with his non-Jewish aunt in Berlin; attending school in Dortmund; living at Zionist, then labor camps from 1940 onward; his older brother's death in an aborted attempt to reach Palestine; avoiding deportation because he was a "mischling"; deciding to live "under...

  12. Sonia R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sonia R., who was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1929 of a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father. She describes her father's anti-Nazi activities; Gestapo harassment; emigration to Italy, then France, in January 1933 because of her father's politics; her mother's art work; expulsion from France nine months later; her father's return to Germany and her mother's refusal, leading to their divorce; moving with her mother to San Remo; her third sibling's birth; receiving government orders in October 1939 to leave because they were foreigners; a German consular official helpin...

  13. Philip B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Philip B., who was born in Izbica, near Lublin, Poland, in 1925. He describes his prewar family life; the wartime transfer of German and Czech Jews to Izbica, a railroad center; and a typhus epidemic there. He recounts the beginning of deportations to Be?z?ec, a nearby extermination camp, in 1941; his family's life in hiding; and the deportations of his father and other family members. Mr. B. relates his own capture by Polish police and his transfer to Gestapo headquarters; his feigned death in front of a firing squad; hiding with siblings and his mother; and his moth...

  14. Eva V. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva V., who was born in 1922 in Oradea Mare, Romania. She recalls her family's high position in local society; their sense of Hungarian identity; graduation from a convent school in 1939; Hungarian occupation; compulsory service for Jewish men in Hungarian labor battalions; the Gestapo commandeering their home; living with her grandfather in the ghetto; refusing to leave her family to escape to Romania; her grandfather's death; and deportation to Auschwitz. Mrs. V. recounts separation from her parents, whom she never saw again; transfer to Kaiserwald, Danzig and Stutt...

  15. Leon H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leon H., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland, in 1919. Mr. H. tells of prewar antisemitism; becoming a carpenter like his father and brothers; his family's move to the ?o?dz? ghetto in 1940; starvation; a German soldier who refused to believe that Jews could be tradesmen; witnessing atrocities while doing carpentry at the local Gestapo headquarters; his mother's death after a beating; and surrendering to join his father and siblings when they were rounded-up. He details conditions on the deportation train; separation from his father and sister at Auschwitz; selection and t...

  16. Mary L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mary L., who was born in Zagreb, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (now Croatia) in 1910. She recalls the beginning of World War I; her father's military service; living in Vienna from 1916 to 1918; the family's move to Berlin in 1926; working for an insurance company; Hitler's ascent to power; losing her job due to anti-Jewish laws; the anti-Jewish boycott in April 1933; returning to Zagreb; studying English in Britain in 1935; marriage to a Catholic; German invasion in April 1941; moving to the United States Consulate where her husband worked; anti-Jewish measures; denuncia...

  17. Ernie M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ernie M., who was born in Cologne, Germany in 1916, one of three children. He recounts his father was an American citizen, thus he was as well; attending Jewish school; working as an auto mechanic; participation in Habonim; becoming a counselor at a Youth Aliyah camp outside of Berlin; police confiscating the identification papers of everyone there in November 1938; traveling to Berlin; arriving on Kristallnacht; observing Jews being beaten and synagogues burning; visiting a friend who had just been released from a concentration camp; returning to the youth camp; lear...

  18. Margo B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Margo B., who was born in Schkeuditz, Germany in 1925. She recalls attending school in Halle; antisemitic restrictions; her father's arrest in 1938 because he had Polish citizenship; his release provided he emigrate within four weeks; his emigration to Paris; joining him with her younger sister, mother, and uncle a month later; moving to Villeneuve-sur-Lot; attending school; her father serving in the military when war began; his return upon French surrender; obtaining false papers for himself from a military colleague; their family receiving false papers from a non-Je...

  19. Ernest H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ernest H., who was born in 1925 in Neumarkt, Germany. He recalls moving to Fu?rth in 1938 so he and his siblings could attend a Jewish school (they were expelled in Neumarkt); his brother's emigration to the United States in 1941; deportation with his parents and sister to Jungfernhof, Latvia in December 1941; forced labor as a car mechanic, which he believes saved him from extermination; transfer to the Ri?ga ghetto in July 1942 (he notes the sadism of the Gestapo commander), then to Kaiserwald and Stutthof in 1943; and liberation from Rybno (Rieben) by Soviet troops...

  20. Alexander R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alexander R., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1908. Mr. R. recalls his youth in a prominent, assimilated family; loss of the family shoe store during the 1919 Communist regime; suppression of the Communists; return of the family business; antisemitism in school and university admissions; law studies; and receiving his doctorate in 1930. He recounts his law apprenticeship with a Jewish politician; military service starting in 1931; attending officer candidate school; antisemitic incidents; discharge in 1932; return to law practice; the political shift to the right...