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Displaying items 241 to 260 of 816
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Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Helen W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Helen W., who was born in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1932. She recalls her father's medical practice; a close, extended family; her father's strong sense of German identity; antisemitic harassment in the streets; attending a Jewish school (it was illegal to attend a secular school); her father's arrest on Kristallnacht; his return about three weeks later; his departure for England in April 1939; placement with her brother on a kindertransport in July; meeting their father in London; attending a boarding school; her mother's visit; evacuation with the school to Richmond whe...

  2. Lieselott E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lieselott E., who was born in Parchim, Germany in 1920. She recalls holiday observances in the local synagogue; deteriorating conditions beginning in 1933; the arrest and brief imprisonment of all Jews in Parchim in 1935; her father's belief that conditions would improve; laws banning her from school; visiting relatives in other cities so she could be anonymous; her father's stroke in 1936; destruction of their house and business on Kristallnacht and her father's second stroke; and fleeing to Berlin, where he died. She recounts returning home with her mother; selling ...

  3. Henni S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henni S., who was born in Dobromil?, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (now Ukraine), in 1906. Mrs. S. tells of her family's move to Holland in 1921; her marriage during a visit to Przemys?l, Poland; the birth of her son in 1929; separation from her husband and son (both of whom she never saw again) when the war began while she was visiting her family in 1939; leaving Brussels on the last train to Paris in May 1940; fleeing to Marseille; living in Italian-occupied Barcelonnette for a year; and paying a guide to take her and others into Switzerland. She relates capture and inc...

  4. Rena B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rena B., who was born in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in 1935. She recalls the family's move to Zagreb; Sephardic Jewish life, particularly Passover; German invasion; anti-Jewish laws; her father hiding to avoid arrest; fleeing with her mother to Italian-occupied Split, with the assistance of a non-Jewish friend; her father's arrival after several months; living in a displaced persons camp in Trieste; living in Asti for eighteen months; friendship with a local girl; briefly attending school in Turin; a fascist round-up and internment in Ferramonti; Zionist activities in the c...

  5. Chaim W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Chaim W., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1932 and raised in Topol?c?any, Czechoslovakia. He recalls anti-Semitic incidents from childhood; an influx of Jewish refugees from Austria; Slovakia's increasing stringent anti-Jewish regulations and violent actions by the Hlinka Guards; hiding with non-Jewish friends; discovery and deportation to Novaky in June 1942; different jobs held by his family; efforts to observe the Sabbath; the Czech Kommandant allowing prisoners to escape in August 1944 prior to the camp's transfer to Germans; fleeing with his family to Banska? ...

  6. 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...

  7. 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 ...

  8. 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...

  9. 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...

  10. 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...

  11. 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...

  12. 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...

  13. 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...

  14. 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 ...

  15. 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...

  16. 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 ...

  17. 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...

  18. 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...

  19. 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...

  20. 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...