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 101 to 120 of 816
Search result ordering
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Hilda S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hilda S., who was born in Bochum, Germany in 1923. She recalls expulsion from public school in 1933; attending Jewish school; assistance from a German neighbor on Kristallnacht; her father's arrest; fleeing to Bergen aan Zee in December 1938; living in a Jewish orphanage in Amsterdam; returning to emigrate with her parents from Hamburg on the St. Louis; being denied entry to Cuba; returning to Holland in June 1939; living with her parents in a refugee camp in Heijplaat; attending school in Amsterdam; transfer with her parents to Westerbork; evacuation to the countrysi...

  2. Lisbeth R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lisbeth R., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1927. She recalls her childhood; the German annnexation of Austria; and the circumstances under which she was chosen for a children's transport to England in February 1939. She describes her life in Norwich, England; receiving news from the rest of the family, still in Austria; and her emigration from Liverpool, with her aunt and uncle, to the United States in May 1940. She tells of life in Queens and the Bronx, New York and her education at Queens and Middlebury Colleges. Mrs. R. also recounts her hope that her parents c...

  3. Rudolf K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rudolf K., who was born in Poland in 1900. He describes his family's move to Leipzig, Germany in 1905; being forced to move during World War I as "enemy aliens"; a later move to Dresden; and starting his business, marriage and the birth of his daughter in Paris. He recalls returning to Germany in 1925 at the request of his parents; founding a successful business; police harassment; escaping to Poland; and helping his family leave Germany with the aid of a friend in the Nazi Party. He tells of liquidating his business in Poland because he was accused of tax evasion; tr...

  4. Anne S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anne S., who was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1922. She recalls a happy childhood until her mother's death in 1930; her father's remarriage; joy when her half-sister was born in 1932; excitement when Hitler visited Stuttgart; disappointment with her friends when she was banned from joining the Hitler youth; hiring an older maid due to the Nuremberg laws; her false accusations against her father; a non-Jewish neighbor testifying in his behalf, which saved his life; his sense of security due to his service in World War I and strong German identity; his death in 1937; e...

  5. Rachel W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rachel W., who was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1938. She recalls her father being taken away when she and her mother were out; her mother taking her to non-Jews to live, then, shortly afterwards, to a convent in Brussels; abusive treatment because she did not eat well and wet her bed; occasional visits from her mother; asking to leave and not being told why she had to stay; her mother taking her out in order to illegally enter Switzerland; being caught by Germans at the border; a stranger paying the Germans to release them; living in a Jewish pension in Switzerland; r...

  6. Sol P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sol P., who was born in ?uko?w, Russia (presently Poland) in 1907, the oldest of thirteen children. He recounts his successful hardware business; marriage in 1927; the births of five children; increasing antisemitism in the 1930s, including boycotts; German invasion; fleeing with his family to avoid bombings; returning alone two weeks later; hiding with his father and sister from a round-up; brief Soviet occupation; bringing his family back to ?uko?w; German reoccupation in October; anti-Jewish restrictions; random killings; arrest and incarceration in Lublin; release...

  7. Helen B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Helen B., who was born in ?uko?w, Poland in 1928, one of five children. She recounts her family's affluence; attending public school; summering in the country in 1939; German invasion; fleeing to Wo?lka Domaszewska; returning home; brief Soviet occupation; Germans returning and plundering their store; her father's arrest and release; housing refugees in their home; anti-Jewish restrictions, including wearing the star; Germans searching for her father and beating her mother in 1942; round-ups and random killings; ghettoization; hiding with a Pole, who turned them over ...

  8. Martin D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Martin D., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1920. He recalls apprenticing as a furrier when he was fourteen; increasing antisemitism; warnings from non-Jews of a round-up; hiding with his father; applying with his sister to emigrate to relatives in London; obtaining a visa; emigrating with a cousin in January 1939 (he never saw his sister or parents again); his relatives refusal to assist him; futile efforts to obtain visas for his sister and parents; arrest as an "enemy alien"; transfer via Liverpool to an internment camp in Ontario, Canada; fights between German a...

  9. Alfred C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alfred C., who was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1924, the younger of two brothers. He recounts his grandfather was a cantor and his father an opera singer; his father's dismissal from his job in 1933 due to Nazi anti-Jewish laws; their resulting poverty; assistance from the Jewish community; attending a Jewish school; antisemitic harassment and boycotts; obtaining documents for two from relatives in the United States; his father's and brother's emigration in June 1938; his father and brother obtaining visas for him and his mother; traveling to Hamburg on Kris...

  10. Inga C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Inga C., who was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1926. She recalls her maternal extended family gatherings; her father, a Russian citizen, traveling to the Soviet Union in 1931, attempting to arrange their emigration; his imprisonment as a "spy"; anti-Jewish restrictions and harassment by Hitler youth; eviction from their apartment in 1936; sexual harassment by the building superintendent, who threatened to deport her if she told anyone; hiding with her aunt's friend, a Nazi party member, during Kristallnacht; returning home to find their apartment ransacked; he...

  11. Leo G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leo G., who was born in Vukovar, Yugoslavia in 1930. He documents the beliefs and activities of his father, a fifth generation cantor; his deeply religious family environment; his father's concern about the rise of Nazism; and the family's consequent relocation from Opava, Czechoslovakia to Copenhagen, Denmark in 1934. He describes the well-integrated Jewish community and the irrelevance of religious affiliation to the Danish national identity; German occupation in 1940; Danish insistence on control of domestic affairs (including the right to protect all citizens); an...

  12. Peter G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape of Peter G., who was born in Baden-Baden, Germany in 1918. He recalls a comfortable childhood; attending public school in Baden-Baden and religious school in Karlsruhe; attempts to expel him from school due to the Nuremberg laws; the principal's insistence that he finish school; his family's emigration in 1938; an eight month internship in Switzerland; returning to Germany; joining a brother in Warsaw; working in Zakopane; returning to Warsaw; German invasion; fleeing to the Soviet zone; his arrest while trying to illegally enter Hungary; imprisonment in Odesa; being sentenced to ...

  13. Reuven L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Reuven L., who was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1927. He describes his father's prominence as a lawyer and his mother's as a gynecologist; his father's assistance to Jewish refugees from Germany and Poland; Soviet occupation; his father's arrest as a capitalist; Lithuanians killing Jews after Germany invaded the Soviet Union prior to entering Kaunas; ghettoization; forced labor at the airport, hunger, and killings; his parents arranging their escape with assistance from a priest; hiding in a monastery, then, using false papers, on a farm and with a Lithuanian woman; f...

  14. Gerhart R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gerhart R., who was born in Berlin. He discusses his pre-1933 career as a junior lawyer and state employee in Berlin; his dismissal when Hitler came to power; his departure from Germany in 1933; and his post as legal secretary for the newly created World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Geneva. He relates his struggle for the rights of the Danzig Jews; the successful WJC campaign in 1938 against the anti-Semitic government of Romania; his responsibility to inform WJC officials in Geneva and New York of wartime atrocities; and his sources of information about Nazi medical expe...

  15. Fela F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Fela F., who was born in Poland in 1923 and moved with her family to Brussels in 1926. She recounts her father's orthodoxy; a brief flight to France before German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; marriage in 1941; her parents and two siblings reporting for deportation in 1942 (she never saw them again); she and her husband hiding with non-Jews in Uccle, using false papers; receiving information from the people hiding them about smuggling herself to Switzerland; interment in a refugee camp in Switzerland; her husband being turned back when he followed her (she never...

  16. Oscar E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Oscar E., who was born in Kos?ice, Czechoslovakia in 1930. In unusual detail, he describes his maternal grandfather's and other relatives' emigration to the United States; Hungarian occupation; antisemitic restrictions; moving to Bardejov in 1938; deportations in 1942; being smuggled with his sister to Budapest; their mother briefly joining them; her deportation (he never saw either of his parents again); living with families in Sze?kesfehe?rva?r, Gyo?r, in a village with his aunt, then in Pribeta; being rounded-up in Nove? Za?mky in May 1944; deportation with his sis...

  17. Hanna P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hanna P., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1928. She recalls her family's affluent life; her brother and father reporting for military service before German invasion; German occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions and food scarcity; learning her father and brother were alive and fleeing to the Soviet zone; using false papers to join them in Soviet-occupied Bia?ystok; moving to Orsha; attending Russian school; fleeing east after the German invasion; her father working as a bookkeeper on a collective farm near the Urals; her brother's draft; moving to Ukraine near the war...

  18. Giorgina V. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Giorgina V., who was born in Turin, Italy in 1926. Mrs. V. describes her family life; moving to Milan, where her grandparents lived, in 1936; attending Hebrew school; the beginning of persecution in 1938; attending public school which had a Catholic emphasis; being barred from that school; her return to Hebrew school; and her happy memories of that time. She recalls Italy's entry into the war in 1940; moving back to Turin; schools closing; being sent to Rome, where she lived with a converted uncle and aunt, to finish high school; German occupation of Turin; and moving...

  19. Grace N. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Grace N., who was born in Posen, Germany (presently Poznan?, Poland) in 1920. She describes her family; moving to Berlin when Posen became part of Poland; the family's successful piano store; their comfortable life; changes with the rise of Nazism; the impact of the Nuremberg laws on their personal lives; her siblings emigrating; the destruction of their store on Kristallnacht; being offered a job by a concert pianist to accompany her on a tour of the United States; and difficulties obtaining papers to leave. She recalls the emotional departure from her parents; missi...

  20. Werner N. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Werner N., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1911. He relates his father's service in World War I; a brief family history; attendance at gymnasium in Berlin; work for an international dental supply firm; his father's feeling of safety during Hitler's rise to power because he was a World War I veteran; his sister's emigration to Palestine in 1934; his attempts to emigrate to the United States; and being able to hide during Kristallnacht because he was forewarned. Mr. N. describes leaving for Shanghai in 1939; obtaining a job and living quarters; deteriorating conditio...