Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 141 to 160 of 816
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. John E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of John E., who was born in Fulda, Germany in 1920. He describes living in a children's home from age eight to twelve; summer vacations with his mother and grandparents in Fulda (his parents were separated); harassment of Jews in 1933; his mother's decision to leave Germany; life in Paris; attending school; assistance received from HIAS and the Joint; and internment in 1939 as an "enemy alien." Mr. E. tells of poor conditions and forced labor in many French camps; rejoining his mother and brother in Marseille in 1942; help from the Joint; internment in Gurs for about a y...

  2. Ernest P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ernest P., who was born in Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1912. He recalls his father's death in 1918 serving in World War I; his mother's struggle to support him and two younger siblings; working at age sixteen to assist; the Anschluss; immediate anti-Jewish laws and violence; obtaining a forged passport in 1938 (his siblings had already left and his mother followed); living in Luxembourg for eighteen months; support from the local Jewish community; marriage to a Polish-Jewish refugee; the Jewish community organizing a group emigration to Cuba; traveling to Iru...

  3. Simon M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Simon M., who was born in Ziegenhals, Germany (now G?ucho?azy, Poland) in 1905. He recalls his impoverished childhood in a large family; his father's military service in World War I; completing eight grade; working as a peddler; marriage in 1928; his first son's birth in 1930; living in Breslau when Hitler came to power; serving as a liaison to the Gestapo; helping Jews emigrate; Kristallnacht; arrest and deportation to Buchenwald; release with assistance from an SS officer; receiving help from Jews in Leipzig; returning to Breslau; traveling to Shanghai via Italy in ...

  4. Anne C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anne C., who was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1919, the middle of three children. She recounts her family's affluence; participating in a Zionist youth group; removal from school in 1934 due to anti-Jewish laws; attending a Jewish school; her parents' emigration to Luxemburg in 1935; attending a boarding school in Munich; emigration to London in 1937; seeing one brother on his way to the United States; visiting her parents in France; her other brother's emigration to Palestine in 1939; marriage; living in Scotland; her husband's death in 1946 (he was killed w...

  5. Michael G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Michael G., who was born in Kurenet?s?, Poland (now Byelorussia) in 1922. He recalls attending a local school until sixth grade; Hebrew school in Dolginovo for two years; brief cantorial studies in Vilna; Soviet occupation in 1939; attending high school and working in Novogrudok; his father's visits; and German invasion in 1941. Mr. G. describes unsuccessful efforts to return home (Germans were everywhere); an arduous six-month journey to Tashkent; transfer in 1942 to Tashkumyr and hard labor in the coal mines; returning to Poland in 1945; learning of the mass murder ...

  6. Liane R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Liane R., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1934. She recalls the Anschluss; her father's apparent suicide in September 1938 after he was forced to close his dental practice; Kristallnacht; embarking on the St. Louis with her mother and brother in 1939; being denied entry to Cuba; sailing between Cuba and Florida while efforts were made to find refuge; and having to return to Europe. Mrs. R. recounts living in Loudun, France for over two years; German invasion; fleeing to Limoges; Jewish organizations which arranged their schooling and her brother's violin lessons an...

  7. John F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of John F., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1917. He recalls his mother's Sabbath observance; the death of one younger sister; outbreaks of antisemitism; studying medicine; membership in Zionist organizations; the Anschluss in 1938; confiscation of his father's business; illegally traveling to Venice in August; staying with an aunt in Trieste; returning to Venice; traveling to Zurich on a tourist visa; his father's arrest after Kristallnacht; attempting to obtain visas to China for his parents and siblings in Bern; resuming his studies; helping his professor smuggle h...

  8. Berthold G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Berthold G., who was born in Regensburg, Germany in 1921. He recalls a cheerful early life; attending a Jewish school until fourth grade, then a high school for engineering training; observing Jewish holidays, although not orthodox; antisemitic harassment, particularly after 1935; working for a German who was kind to him until 1938; his family receiving United States visas, planning to emigrate in December; his father's arrest on Kristallnacht; his arrest with his mother and grandmother the next morning; finding his father at the assembly place; their deportation to D...

  9. Robert S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Robert S., who was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1919, the youngest of five children. He recalls attending a Jewish school; visiting his sisters and their families in Kraków; working in his family's business; an SS friend warning him of Kristallnacht; German invasion of Poland; one brother fleeing to Nice; his parents being trapped in Poland while visiting Kraków; four failed attempts to leave Germany; arrest and release in Zwieselstein, Austria during an attempt; moving to Berlin; being smuggled with his cousin to the Netherlands in November 1939; living at his uncle...

  10. Daisy M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Daisy M., who was born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia in 1938. She recounts illegally crossing the Italian border in 1941 with her parents, an aunt, and two cousins; living in Montecatini for almost a year; leaving illegally in September 1943 after hearing of deportations; partisans hiding them in a village outside Florence for two months; being hidden elsewhere after Germans neared; farmers bringing them food; warnings of German patrols during which they hid in a pit and mountain caves; liberation by South African troops; returning to the village outside Florence; her father'...

  11. Millie S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Millie S., who was born in Grossenlinden, Germany in 1991. She recalls cordial relations with non-Jews; attending public school; changes after Hitler became known; her brother being stabbed by a young Nazi in 1928; marriage; her son's birth; her parents' and younger brother's emigration to the United States in 1936; her husband's and brother-in-law's imprisonment on Kristallnacht; hiding with her son when her apartment was ransacked; the police chief warning her to leave town; traveling to Frankfurt; learning her husband was in Buchenwald; the town's mayor warning her...

  12. Ruth S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ruth S., who was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1937. She describes her father emigrating from Germany in 1933; his continued contact with his family in Germany; marriage to her mother in 1934; their bourgeois life; German invasion in 1940; her father hiding to avoid arrest; her parents' decision to leave in spite of sympathetic treatment from the Danes; her maternal grandparents' arrest in 1943 (she later learned they were deported to Terezi?n); escape with her parents to Malmo?, Sweden in October 1943; living with relatives there; celebrating the Danish liberation; ...

  13. Donald R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Donald R., who was born in Amsterdam, Holland in 1917 to Polish immigrants. He recalls his father's death in 1918; moving to Berlin in 1920; his mother's remarriage; anti-Jewish laws resulting in his expulsion from school in 1934; working for Ford; expulsion from Germany in 1938 as a Polish citizen; Poland's refusal to admit him and other Jews; smuggling himself to his uncle's farm in Poland; being joined by his mother, stepfather, and brother; living in Krako?w; traveling to Berlin to obtain a United States visa; remaining in Germany beyond the permitted date; travel...

  14. Shulamit L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Shulamit L., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1927. She recounts her family's poverty; attending public school; her parents' divorce; living with her mother; the Anschluss; anti-Jewish restrictions resulting in expulsion from school; participating in a Zionist youth group; her father's remarriage; Kristallnacht; her father's emigration to the United States; her emigration with other children via Trieste to Palestine in 1940; receiving a postcard from her mother in Theresienstadt; living with a family in Jerusalem, then at a children's village; learning after the war...

  15. Henri B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henri B., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1930. He recalls his family's emigration to Paris; being sent to Poland to live with his grandparents; returning to Paris in the mid-1930s; no religious observances in his home; evacuation with other children to an OSE home in the Creuse; warm relations with the children and staff; a close friendship with a young man; traveling in a group to Casablanca via Marseille in spring 1942, then to the United States in a Portuguese ship; living briefly with a family in Yonkers, N.Y., then for five years with a family in Pittsburgh; c...

  16. Gertrude G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gertrude G., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1931. She recalls hostility from local Nazis after the Anschluss in March 1938; anti-Jewish restrictions and violence; expulsion from school; her father's arrest prior to Kristallnacht; public humiliation of her mother and grandmother on Kristallnacht; learning her father was in Dachau; his release, based upon a promise to leave Austria; their emigration to Italy; living in Milan with assistance from the Joint; attending a Jewish school; her father's internment as a political refugee; joining him, with her mother, in Cas...

  17. Hans N. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hans N., who was born in Hannover, Germany in 1921. He describes his youth in an assimilated and comfortable family with a strong Germany identity; little or no antisemitism prior to Hitler's rise to power; the dramatic change and his efforts to avoid drawing attention to himself as a Jew; expulsion from his sports club; hearing of concentration camps; expulsion from school in 1936; working for a non-Jewish acquaintance; and non-Jewish friends who assisted in his emigration. He recalls two Americans who also helped; his parents accompanying him to New York in 1937; at...

  18. Anne G. Holocaust testimony

    Video testimony of Anne G., who was born in a small town in Germany in 1910, moved to Ludwigshafen am Rhein, and then to Mannheim in 1932. She recalls anti-Semitic incidents; attending a speech by Hitler in Mannheim; her father leaving for France; and her fiance's attempt to leave Germany. She describes Crystal Night, detailing atrocities she witnessed; her conflict due to her love for Germany; being incarcerated in Mannheim prison; and obtaining papers enabling her to emigrate to England. Mrs. G. describes the painful departure from her mother and grandmother; her reunion with her fiance i...

  19. Anna K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anna K., who was born in Bar, Ukraine in 1926. She recounts moving to Mohyliv-Podilʹsʹkyĭ, then Tomashpolʹ; attending school to eighth grade; cordial relations with non-Jews; German invasion in July 1941; evacuating to Stalingrad (Volgograd) with her parents and brother, then to Goncharovka; working on a collective farm; evacuation to Astrakhanʹ, Chimkent (On︠g︡tu̇stīk), Kazakhstan, then Karamurt; working on a collective farm; studying in Chimkent and working summers on the collective farm with her family; traveling to Makiïvka in 1944; working as a tax inspector; ...

  20. Mikhael K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mikhael K., who was born in Rokitnoye, Ukraine in 1925. He recalls Soviet antisemitism prior to the war; evacuating with his family to Kazakhstan after the German bombing of Kiev in June 1941; his brother's service in the Soviet military (he was killed in 1942); starvation conditions while working on a collective farm; entering the Soviet military at the end of 1942; serving at the front; being wounded in March 1944; a six-month recovery; gradually learning of the destruction of Jews; joining his family in Kazakhstan; their return to Rokitnoye in October 1944; enterin...