Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 61 to 80 of 816
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Jacob F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jacob F., who was born in ?o?dz? , Poland in 1924. He describes family Shabbat observance; his father's shoemaking shop; attending public and Hebrew schools; active participation in the Bund; learning the weaving trade; German-Jewish refugees asking for charity; German invasion; ghettoization; participating in the clandestine distribution of news by the Bund; pervasive hunger; poor sanitary conditions; frequent round-ups and deportations; deportation to Auschwitz in August 1944; separation from his family upon arrival; transfer to Dachau in September; forced labor; fr...

  2. 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 ...

  3. Thomas W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Thomas W., who was born in Prague in 1917 in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. He recalls his parents' total assimilation; moving to Hamburg; his parents' divorce in 1934; their return to Prague; studying English literature and linguistics; teaching at a Swiss boarding school; returning to Czechoslovakia; German occupation; futile efforts to emigrate through Poland; obtaining a refugee fellowship at Harvard University; receiving exit documents; parting from his mother; traveling on a train full of German soldiers; arriving in Holland; crossing to England; leaving for the...

  4. Anne D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anne D., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1935. She recounts attending boarding school when her mother became ill in 1938; her parents' baptisms; not knowing she was Jewish; illegal emigration to Lucerne, Switzerland in 1939, then to Casablanca (they had relatives there); regularly attending church; exposure to antisemitism (she did not learn she was Jewish until she was ten); marriage to an American soldier in 1954; emigration to Seattle; the births of two children; divorce; remarriage; living in France, where her third child was born, then Seattle; and emigratio...

  5. Irene W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Irene S., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1921. She recounts her parents' divorce; attending public school; her close relationship with her grandparents; anti-Jewish restrictions, including expulsion from school; attending a Jewish school; her father's emigration to the Netherlands; his marriage to a non-Jew; attending boarding schools in Belgium and the Netherlands; realizing they had to leave after Kristallnacht; obtaining papers for the United States with assistance from a stranger in Boston who shared their last name; emigration via the Netherlands in July 1939...

  6. Eva S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva S., who was born in Berlin in 1922. She describes her childhood and youth in Nazi Germany, including particularly vivid memories of the day Hitler came to power, Kristallnacht, and her brother's bar mitzvah, which took place in the chapel of a Jewish old age home because all the synagogues had been destroyed. She also discusses her journey to England with a children's transport in 1939 and her life in England, where she remained for several years. She speaks of her sense of Jewishness, which she acquired in school rather than in her non-observant home, and of the ...

  7. Walter F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Walter F., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1919. He recalls his close family; deciding to leave Austria immediately after the Anschluss; antisemitic harassment by brown-shirted boys; traveling to Italy with a cousin; working in Albanian oil fields; moving to Tirana before receiving their visas; a brief reunion with his father (he was waiting to leave for England to join his wife); emigration to the United States; enlisting in the army; and visiting his parents in London when he was stationed in England. He discusses his desire to forget everything prior to emigrati...

  8. Lucie W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lucie W., who was born in Bad Berleburg, Germany in 1924. She describes instances of Nazi-related antisemitism in public school; her family's experiences during Kristallnacht and its aftermath; her journey to Belgium, along with her brother and sister, on a children's transport; and her unsuccessful attempt to escape into France. She also relates her illegal entry into Germany in February 1941, in order to emigrate to the United States with her family, and her subsequent emigration to the United States via Portugal.

  9. Claire S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Claire S., who was born in Augsburg, Germany in 1908. She recalls her family's orthodoxy; attending business school in Augsburg, then nursing training in Frankfurt; moving to Schweinfurt in 1929 to join her fiance; marriage in 1937; antisemitic restrictions; arrest of her husband and father-in-law on Kristallnacht; her father-in-law's release; obtaining her husband's release after securing American permission to emigrate to Manila; her husband's departure in February 1939; joining him in September; having to leave all their possessions and money in Germany; working as...

  10. Leo E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leo E., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1912. He recalls antisemitic boycotts of his father's store; one brother's emigration to Belgium; German invasion; forced labor for a day; fleeing with his sister and brother-in-law to the Soviet border; assistance from German soldiers; traveling to Bia?ystok; living in Kovel? from December 1939 through May 1940; deportation by the Soviets to Novosibirsk; forced labor in Osinovo; his marriage in Tomsk; living with his family in Bii?sk; traveling to Stettin via Warsaw; living in Schlachtensee, then Tempelhof; his son's birth in...

  11. Ursula D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ursula D., a non-Jew, who was born in Cologne, Germany in 1938. She recounts her parents' anti-Nazi sympathies; her father listening to Allied radio broadcasts; Allied bombing; constant fear; arrival of United States troops; postwar hardships, including rationing; an influx of refugees; her sense that Germans refused to admit culpability for the war and considered themselves "victims"; visiting relatives in Belgium, where she first learned about the Holocaust; confronting her parents; their unwillingness to discuss it; moving to Israel in the early 1960s; marriage to ...

  12. Suzanne W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Suzanne W., who was born in Mannheim, Germany in 1919. She recalls expulsion from public school due to antisemitism; attending a private school; leaving in 1938 to join an aunt in the United States; efforts to bring over her family; her older brother joining her around 1940; her younger brother living with an aunt in Belgium, then returning to Mannheim immediately after their parents were deported to Gurs (he went to an orphanage in Frankfurt); receiving some correspondence from her parents; losing contact during the war; learning after the war that her parents had be...

  13. Paul G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paul G., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1922. He tells of family moves to Budapest, France, then Berlin before he was five; being the only Jew in public school; the cosmopolitan Berlin lifestyle; being sent to his grandmother in Hungary from 1933 to 1935 due to the rise of Hitler; and increased antisemitism upon his return. Mr. G. recalls emigrating to the United States with his parents in 1936 rather than Hungary (his parents were Hungarian); their adjustment; the experience of being an immigrant; learning of family members who perished in concentration camps; an...

  14. Max L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Max L., who was born in Wuppertal, Germany in 1921, the younger of two children. He recounts attending public and Hebrew schools; antisemitic harassment; participating in a Jewish scout group; anti-Jewish boycotts and restrictions; his bar mitzvah in 1934, the last time his extended family was together; his sister's emigration to the United States in 1936; his emigration in 1937; his parents' arrival in 1938; military draft in 1942; training as a dental technician; marriage; and the births of two children. Mr. L. discusses planning a ten-day visit to Germany in 1987; ...

  15. Hedi S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hedi S., who was born in Mainz, Germany in 1904. She recalls her sheltered life as the only child of a prosperous, assimilated family; attending a Jewish elementary school; traveling with her parents; marriage and divorce; and cordial relations with non-Jews. Mrs. S. recalls the anti-Jewish boycott in Berlin; her father's death in 1935; deciding to emigrate for her son's sake; obtaining a visa through American relatives; being searched when leaving in 1937; and learning of her former parents-in-law's suicide. She describes several jobs after arriving in New York; her ...

  16. Fred S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Fred S., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1924. He recalls his family's poverty; attending gymnasium; antisemitic harassment; membership in Betar; the Anschluss; antisemitic harassment in the streets; his sister's emigration to the United States in May 1938; he and his parents joining her in June; his brother's emigration via Italy in August; attending high school; military draft in 1943; antisemitism in basic training; service in the Pacific; hospitalization after being wounded; returning home; discharge in August 1945; marriage in 1951; his business career; and vi...

  17. Kurt L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Kurt L., who was born in Wiesbaden, Germany in 1910. He recalls his father's prosperous cattle business; attending law school; Hitler's ascent to power; antisemitic laws prohibiting him from practicing law; studying in Basel; an unsuccessful attempt to establish a business in Casablanca; living in Paris and Brussels; returning to Germany; obtaining a ten-day visa to visit the United States; traveling to New York; spending three months in Havana obtaining documents to return to the United States; his parents' visit in 1937; their return to Germany, not liking the U.S.;...

  18. Max T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Max T., who was born in Buchach, Poland in 1901. He recalls fleeing with his family to Vienna in 1914; attending business school; joining a sports club in 1921; his father's death in 1926; marriage in 1928; his activities in the socialist uprising in 1934; the Anschluss; arrest on Kristallnacht; incarceration in Dachau; his wife obtaining visas to Sweden, with assistance from the trade union, resulting in his release; their emigration to Sweden then, with assistance from his uncle in the United States, to America ; his daughter's birth in 1946; and his subsequent care...

  19. Rachel A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rachel A., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1921. She recalls celebrating Easter and Christmas; moving to Kiel in 1926; antisemitic abuse in school; moving to Frankfurt in 1931; Nazi demonstrations; leaving school in March 1933; her parents changing her name to the more "Aryan"-sounding "Dora"; traveling to Switzerland in April 1933; moving to Manchester; assistance from the Jewish community, her first contact with other Jews; attending nursing school in London in 1938; the school's evacuation to Wales in September 1940; and emigration to the United States in 1940. ...

  20. Paul G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paul G., who was born in Vienna in 1909. He recalls his medical education; prewar antisemitism in Vienna; his unsuccessful attempt to get help emigrating to England in 1936; the German occupation of Austria (Anschluss); his escape from Austria to join his mother in Czechoslovakia; and his departure for the United States, after many attempts, two days before the deadline. He relates his arrival and adjustment to life in the United States, where he became a dentist; the death of his father; the fate of other family members; and his anxiety and guilt feelings about not b...