Archival Descriptions

Advanced query tips

There are several ways to be more specific in your search query:

"Phrase"
Search an exact match of your query, e.g. "Member lists"
+Phrase
Given word has to be in the result, e.g. +Gestapo
-Phrase
Exclude given word from search, e.g. -Gestapo

Use the following syntax to restrict the search to specific fields:

field:"phrase"
For instance, you can find all descriptions that have the phrase "Auschwitz Birkenau" in their titles by searching for title:"Auschwitz Birkenau".

The following fields are currently available:

  • identifier
  • title
  • creator
  • person
  • place
  • subject
  • address
Displaying items 13,001 to 13,020 of 55,824
Search result ordering

  1. Anna M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anna M., who was born in Mielec, Poland, one of six children. She recalls close relations with her extended family; their orthodoxy; moving to Krako?w in 1935; an anti-Jewish boycott; German invasion; one sister fleeing to the Soviet zone; ghettoization; forced labor; a friend, disguised as a non-Jew, smuggling food to them; her sister's marriage; her family's deportation in October 1942 (she never saw them again); deportation to P?aszo?w; a public hanging; transfer nine months later to Skarz?ysko-Kamienna; slave labor in a munitions factory; helping a fellow prisoner...

  2. Sylvia M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sylvia M., who was born in Vilna, Poland (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in approximately 1926, one of three sisters. She recounts attending a Jewish school; increasing antisemitism in the late 1930s; Soviet occupation in 1939; attending free public high school; brief Lithuanian independence; an antisemitic riot; Soviet reoccupation in 1940; German invasion in 1941; her father's forced labor; learning her uncle had been killed with many others; ghettoization in September 1941; her older sister smuggling food; transfer to Keilis due to her older sister's privileged posi...

  3. Bernard and Henry S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Bernard and Henry S., twins who were born in Lie?ge, Belgium in 1935. They detail their close, extended family; the German invasion; their escape; and settling in Saint-Etienne, France with the families of two uncles. They describe changes in 1942; being placed with a non-Jewish family; their father's and uncle's arrest and mother's evasion of a German round-up; their cousin's release from Drancy with fifty other children through intervention of the Cardinal of Lyon; living in an orphanage in Saint-Etienne, on a farm where they were mistreated, and an orphanage in Gre...

  4. Adam M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Adam M., who was born in Krako?w, Poland in 1927. He describes his family fleeing to Belgium; their peaceful life; German invasion; fleeing to Montpellier; his father's arrest and release due to a French medal received in World War I Polish Army service; life in Le Bousquet-d'Orb from 1940 to 1943; participation in a children's transport, organized by Quakers, to the United States in 1942; its cancellation when the U.S. entered the war; and German occupation. Mr. M. recalls his parents' and brother's internment; their release due to his father's World War I service; h...

  5. Rose S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rose S., who was born in Vranov, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (presently Slovakia) in 1910, one of four siblings. She recounts her mother's death in childbirth; her father's extraordinary devotion to his children; his death at age thirty-eight; her marriage in Kos?ice; Hungarian occupation; disbelief upon hearing of the fate of Jews elsewhere; concentration of Jews from the surrounding area in Kos?ice; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her husband (she never saw him again); selection; regret that she was chosen to live; witnessing atrocities; transfer after three...

  6. Hadassah R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hadassah R., who was born in Ko?o around 1923. She recalls attending Polish school in Da?bie Miasto; the German invasion; posing as a Christian to return to Ko?o; atrocities committed against Jews, particularly the brutal beating of her brother; establishment of a killing center in nearby Che?mno, from which she escaped; posing as a non-Jew; and meeting other Jews hiding near Grabo?w. Mrs. R. describes ghettos in Ozorko?w and ?e?czyca; working in a typhus hospital; transfer to ?o?dz?; attempts to warn Rumkowski about the Che?mno killing center; her sense that people s...

  7. Rabbi Avraham S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rabbi Avraham S., who was born in Holland in 1943. Now a prominent rabbi, author, and activist, he describes his experiences through recurring reflections on a memorable telephone conversation with his sister, and he reads several of his own poems and midrashim during the course of the interview. Rabbi S. tells of his parents' decision to place him with non-Jews; his foster families and their relationship to his real parents; his parents' hiding in Holland; his father's postwar search for him; the death of his foster father on the day of the liberation; and the suicid...

  8. Frank S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Frank S., who was born in Boryslav, Poland in 1916. Mr. S. recalls his childhood in L?vov; his Polish and Jewish identities; emigration of one brother to Palestine and another to New York; anti-Semitic incidents; his medical studies in Italy, France and Belgium; and return to Poland in the summer of 1939 due to his Polish patriotism. He discusses Soviet occupation; leading Polish student resisters; German occupation; mass murders and deportations; moving to the Warsaw ghetto with his parents, brother and sister-in-law; deteriorating conditions; extreme hunger; and dep...

  9. Ib J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ib J., who was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1924. Mr. J. speaks of his education and family life; the German occupation; becoming involved with the underground; sabotaging Nazi cars and trucks; and his feelings when a comrade was killed in an underground action. He describes the gradual reaction of the Danish population to the occupation and provides a general overview of the growth and activities of the Danish underground movement. Mr. J. also expresses his disappointment with the way in which certain people behaved immediately following the war; his embarrassment ...

  10. Nadia P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Nadia P., who was born in Vilna in 1902. She describes her childhood and family life before World War I; moving to New York City, where she lived from 1927 until 1937; life in Vilna upon her return; the outbreak of war in 1939; and life in the ghetto after 1941 and her work cleaning the houses of the SS. Mrs. P. tells of sending her children to the country to hide; her husband's work in the ghetto; aid from non-Jews; and liberation by the Russians. She recalls her feelings of displacement immediately after the war; her emigration to Israel; the death of her husband, a...

  11. David B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of David B., who was born in Thessalonike?, Greece in 1915, one of six children. He recalls the vibrant Jewish community; working in a bank; joining the Greek army in April 1941; returning home in May after defeat by Germany; anti-Jewish laws; the Jewish community paying a huge ransom to free its men; ghettoization; declining to join the communist resistance; round-ups and deportations; hiding his mother and brother; their betrayal; joining them to provide protection; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from his family (he never saw them again); transfer to Golleschau; ...

  12. Norbert M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Norbert M., who was born in Czernowitz, Romania in 1922. He recalls his family's socialist leanings; Soviet occupation; ghettoization in October 1941; deportations; arranging to flee with his entire family to Mogilev; forced labor for the Romanian army; ghettoization; improved conditions while working for the retreating German army; liberation by Soviet troops in 1944; being drafted with his brother into the Soviet army; deserting in Warsaw; returning to Romania; attending medical school; marriage; joining his family in Israel; and emigration to the United States.

  13. Susan M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Susan M., who was raised in Budapest, Hungary. She recalls her paternal grandmother with whom she associates Jewish holidays and traditions; anti-Jewish measures when she was five years old; her father's compulsory service in a Hungarian labor battalion; German invasion; moving into the ghetto in March 1944; separation from her mother during round-ups; her mother's escape from a brick factory and bribing a Hungarian to bring her to a Swedish safe house; living there with her mother; avoiding deportation with assistance from resistants; pervasive fear and hunger; and l...

  14. Norman L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Norman L., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1919. He recalls German invasion; moving into the ghetto with his parents; obtaining an apartment by becoming a building manager; starvation and frequent deaths; his depression; the shock of witnessing a brutal killing; his family's deportation to Treblinka (he never saw them again); obtaining a factory job with his friend's assistance; working until November 1942; escaping with assistance from a garbage collector; acquiring false papers from a non-Jewish acquaintance; renting an apartment and selling soap, posing as a non-...

  15. Rabbi Henry B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rabbi Henry B., who was born in Fu?rth, Germany, in 1907. He speaks of family life before the war; antisemitism in Furth; his experience on Kristallnacht in Frankfurt am Main; and his 1940 departure for Cuba, from where he later emigrated to the United States. He stresses that antisemitism existed in Germany before Hitler, recalling the increasing repression and the persecution of German Jews before the outbreak of war. He also describes his return to Germany in 1950 to visit his father's grave; his brief stint as the head rabbi in Lima, Peru; and his anger at the Uni...

  16. Jean H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jean H., who was born in Danzig, Germany in 1920. She describes family and community life during the 1930s, noting the integration of Jews and non-Jews before 1933; the strong German identity of her father and the rest of her relatives; the beginning of anti-Jewish legislation, which prompted the Jewish community to establish its own schools; her involvement in a Jewish youth group until 1936; increasingly violent displays of antisemitism; and the general deterioration of the Jewish situation. She relates hearing stories of concentration camps in Germany and recalls t...

  17. Jacqueline E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jacqueline E., who was born in Paris in 1915. She describes growing up in a middle class family, stressing the absence of antisemitism before the war; moving with her parents to Vichy after the outbreak of war; the French army's surrender and the entrance of the Germans into Vichy; and her marriage in 1940 and move with her husband to the south of France in 1941. She recounts helping foreign Jews to smuggle across the Spanish border; the Italian occupation in 1942; her and her husband's move to a town near the Italian border, where they obtained false papers; and her ...

  18. Steven H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Steven H., who was born in Amsterdam in 1938. Mr. H. tells of his parents' flight from Germany in 1936; the gradual round-up of Jews in Amsterdam after the German occupation; and the failed escape attempt of Mr. H., his parents, and his twin sister in 1943. He relates the family's deportation to Westerbork in the summer of 1943 for two months; his father's successful effort to have them released; the arrest of his mother, himself and his sister one week later; their return to Westerbork; and his father's voluntarily joining them. He tells of his father's bribery to tr...

  19. Marion L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Marion L., who was born in Amsterdam in 1938. Mrs. L.'s first specific memory is of her family being picked up by the Nazis and their deportation to Westerbork. She recalls that her family spoke Dutch in their home; that she always understood German but never heard Yiddish; and the secret language which she and her twin brother spoke in the camps. She relates her parents' ability to cope and describes conditions in Westerbork where the family stayed for about one year. She remembers playing there and that life revolved around the arrival and departure of trains. She t...

  20. Steven H. and Marion L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Steven H. and Marion L., twins, who discuss the period immediately following their liberation by the Russians from a train in a small German farm village; the subsequent arrival of American troops; and their transfer to a holding camp in Leipzig. They remember their parents' efforts to return to Amsterdam and the frustration of being put into another camp because they were German by birth, in spite of having been deported from Amsterdam. They relate their journey to the United States and their arrival in New York on January 1, 1946. They discuss extensively their post...