Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 9,541 to 9,560 of 55,818
  1. Helen F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Helen F., who was born in Uz?h?horod, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1926. She recalls the warmth of her family's observances of Jewish holidays; her father's role as the cantor; cordial relations with non-Jews; sharing their home with relatives who had fled Germany; German occupation in spring 1944; ghettoization for four weeks; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her parents upon arrival; brutal camp guards; starvation; lack of facilities for personal hygiene; frequent selections; receiving extra food from a female guard; suicides; a death march in Dece...

  2. David L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of David L., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1920. He speaks of his happy childhood, religious education, and Zionist activities. Noting prewar, wartime, and postwar antisemitism, he describes the German occupation; the ghettoization of Warsaw; and conditions and daily life in the ghetto. He recalls his escape from the railroad station while awaiting deportation; the desperation and fear alternating with resignation that characterized his life in hiding on the Aryan side in Warsaw and its suburbs for the next year and a half; his marriage, while in hiding, in May 1943;...

  3. Sima S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sima S., who was born in Vilna, Poland (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1924, one of three children. She recounts attending Hebrew and Yiddish schools; a rich Jewish cultural environment; participating in drama, choir, and scouts; antisemitic harassment; Soviet occupation, then Lithuanian control in 1939; she and her family living with an uncle in Dokshytsy; their return to Vilnius; performing in a Yiddish theater; German invasion in June 1941; anti-Jewish restrictions; a round-up including her brother and father (she never saw them again); brief imprisonment; ghetto...

  4. Anne-Lise S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anne-Lise S., who was born in Mannheim, Germany in approximately 1922. She recalls incarceration in Drancy; forming friendships; train transport to Auschwitz/Birkenau; selection for a quarantine barrack; thinking she was in a camp for insane people; one friend dying because she refused to eat, despite urging from others; an Italian Communist explaining the camp to them; slave labor building roads, then a privileged position as a translator due to her friend's influence; being protected from selections by friends who worked in the main office; working near the Canada K...

  5. Allegra and Henry A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Allegra A., who was born in Salonika, Greece in 1910, and her husband Henry, who joins her for the last half hour. She recounts her youth as the oldest of seven children in an observant family; education in a French Jewish school; apprenticing as a seamstress; working in her family's textile dyeing plant; her arranged courtship and marriage; extensive volunteer work for the Jewish National Fund; the birth of her son in 1939; and escaping Italian air raids in 1940. She recalls the arrival of German troops; anti-Jewish measures; persuading her husband not to register fo...

  6. John F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of John F., who served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. He recalls being assigned to an information gathering unit; traveling as a group of four to assignments and conveying their findings to their commander; assignment to visit Buchenwald; not being able to have imagined what they saw; being shown parts of the camp by an English-speaking guide, a former prisoner; disgust at the sights and smells; and continuing on to future assignments. Mr. F. discusses serving on the governor's Holocaust Committee and implementing Holocaust curriculum for sixth,...

  7. Lea W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lea W., who was born in Poland in 1921, and moved to Paris with her family in 1929 due to increasing antisemitism. She recalls active participation in Hashomer Hatzair; German invasion; her boyfriend's incarceration in Pithiviers in 1941; obtaining false documents verifying she was born in France; visiting her boyfriend; assisting him to escape to Toulouse, then their return to Paris; their marriage; moving to Dordogne, fearing discovery in Paris; non-Jews assisting her husband to obtain excellent false documents and local residence registration for them and her paren...

  8. Bart S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Bart S., who was born in Uz?horod, Czechoslovakia and was twelve at the time of the Hungarian occupation in November 1938. He recalls Jewish refugees who fled from Sudetenland; being terrified that a Jewish community could disintegrate so rapidly; anti-Jewish laws; German occupation in 1944; suicides in the cattle car during deportation to Birkenau; transfer with his two older brothers to Auschwitz; slave labor in a coal mine in Jaworzno; his sense of complete hopelessness; transfer to a death block in Birkenau; hiding during evacuation in January 1945 (his brothers p...

  9. Sida S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sida S., who was born in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in 1921. She recalls her family's move to Belgrade in 1934; involvement in Hashomer Hatzair; attending medical school; German invasion; hiding with her sister's non-Jewish friends; traveling to Tuzla with her boyfriend and brother to escape Ustaša killings; doing forced labor in her mother's place; sending photos of her parents to a relative in Mostar to obtain false papers; her father's and brother's arrest by Ustaša; receiving the false papers and a Muslim disguise; escaping with her mother to Italian-occupied Mostar; ...

  10. Morris K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Morris K., who was born in 1926 in ?o?dz?, Poland. He recalls German invasion; being caught in a round-up in December 1939; forced labor near Hamburg; transfer to Poznan? in March 1941 when it was discovered he was Jewish; transfer to the ?o?dz? ghetto in February 1943; reunion with his father; and deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau several days later. Mr. K. tells of a privileged work assignment obtained through a friend; two weeks in the punishment camp in March 1944; transfer to the Sonderkommando; working at the cremation pits into which guards threw living childre...

  11. Leo L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leo L., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1924. In addition to information in a previously recorded testimony (HVT-729), Mr. L. recounts working in a textile workshop in Auschwitz; privileged work transporting potatoes at Ohrdruf; protection from the German guard; hospitalization after being kicked by an Ukrainian guard; losing his privileged position; the German guard "saving his life" by reclaiming him for his group; a death march in March 1945; escaping with a Soviet POW and others; returning to Ohrdruf; liberation; traveling to Gotha; a Jewish-American soldier pro...

  12. Edith F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Edith F., who was born in a small town in Czechoslovakia and moved to Mukacheve when she was seven. She recalls her oldest brother's emigration to the United States in 1938; Hungarian occupation; ghettoization in spring 1944; deportation with her family to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation by gender; assignment to Canada Kommando with her mother, sister, and aunt; smuggling food and clothing to others; protecting her mother; observing Jewish holidays; her sister's transfer, then her's, to a labor camp; slave labor in a communications equipment factory; staying with a chi...

  13. Joseph M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph M., who was born in Szczakowa, Poland, in 1922. He speaks of family life before the war; the mistreatment and killings of Jews at the beginning of the war; his 1940 deportation to Sakrau, where he was a slave laborer; and his transfer to Gross Masselwitz in 1942. He describes a typical day in Neukirch, a labor camp he was sent to in 1943, and conditions in the camps to which he was subsequently sent: Marksta?dt, Schmiedeberg, Klettendorf, and Waldenburg, where he was liberated by the Russians in 1945. He discusses his postwar return home; his reunion with his s...

  14. Leon W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leon W., who was born in Radzymin, Poland in 1911. He recounts traveling between Radzymin and the Warsaw ghetto; learning of the upcoming deportation of the Jews from Radzymin; arranging his wife's and daughter's escape; deportation of his father, siblings, and other family to Treblinka in 1942; fleeing to a labor camp near Radzymin; escaping before the camp's liquidation; fleeing with his wife and daughter to Warsaw; leaving their eighteen-month-old daughter on the doorstep of a lawyer's house hoping to save her; arranging for his wife to be a housekeeper for a Polis...

  15. Mendel F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mendel F., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1924, the youngest of four children. Mr. F. describes active participation in S.K.I.F., the youth organization of the Bund; one brother's death from illness in 1936; German invasion in 1939; ghettoization; starvation, poor sanitation, and high death rates; he and other youths protesting the lack of food in March 1941; joining a group of friends giving their flour rations to a sick friend; assisting with organizing schools and youth activities; his other brother being shot in 1942; hiding with his parents, sister, and relati...

  16. Anne-Marie R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anne-Marie R., who was born in Krefeld, Germany in 1925. She describes her assimilated family who had lived in Germany since 1630; moving to Mannheim; friendships with non-Jews; being beaten by other children after school and being helped by her non-Jewish friends; moving to Switzerland because her mother had tuberculosis; her mother's death in 1938; moving to Holland with her stepfather and maternal grandmother; and the German invasion when her stepfather was in Brazil. She recalls moving to Bussum; attending a public school for one year; having to wear a star and no...

  17. Henri E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henri E., who was born in Paris, France in 1916, one of five children. He recalls participating in organized sports; military service in 1937 in Metz; assignment to the Maginot Line in August 1939; retreating during the German invasion in 1940; being wounded; evacuation to Vichy; nineteen months hospitalization; activities for the Resistance while on furloughs from the hospital; meeting his sister in Clermont-Ferrand; participating in bombing Vichy government and Gestapo offices; his sister's arrest, then his on September 13, 1942; imprisonment in several places; a fa...

  18. Paula S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paula S., who was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1912. She recounts her family's evacuation to England during World War I; returning home; their poverty; her father's death; one sister emigrating to England (she had been born there); participating in communist youth activities; German invasion; organizing anti-Nazi activities; joining the partisans; defying anti-Jewish restrictions; her mother's and sister-in-law's deportations (she never saw them again); hiding using false papers; arrest; imprisonment in Antwerp and St. Gilles; transfer to Breendonk, then Malines; not r...

  19. Shirley W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Shirley W., who was born in Poland circa 1924. She tells of the German occupation and describes the massacres of Jews which followed. Her mother, grandmother, and older sister were killed during this time. Mrs. W. explains that by hiding in a bunker, she, her father, and her younger sister were able to avoid deportation from the ghetto to which they were confined. She relates their experiences in hiding, first in the countryside surrounding the ghetto, and later in the forest where they lived with the partisans. Mrs. W. also mentions spending four years after the war ...