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Displaying items 141 to 160 of 816
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Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Eric L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eric L., who was born in O?hringen, Germany in 1916. He relates his family's history in Germany since the 17th century; moving in 1926 to Go?ppingen, where his father was rabbi, religious school teacher and cantor; friendly relationships with classmates; the shock of Hitler's appointment as Chancellor; people at school soon wearing swastika buttons; continued support from two Catholic classmates; students wearing brown uniforms and singing Nazi songs; and withdrawing from school due to antisemitism. He recounts the next four years at an orthodox teacher-training schoo...

  2. Alfred S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alfred S., who was born in Mannheim, Germany in 1921. Mr. S. describes his family's strong sense of German identification and patriotism; the appearance of Nazis and antisemitism in his school; his growing sense of Jewish identity; alienation from his parents due to their refusal to recognize the danger of antisemitism; and participation in Jewish youth groups including Hashomer Hatzair. He recalls his father's death in 1934; non-Jewish friends protecting him from police; voluntary transfer to a Jewish school in 1936; attending the ORT school in Berlin from 1937 onwar...

  3. Herbert F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Herbert F., who was born in Michelstadt, Germany in 1910. He recalls the family moves to Bad Mergentheim, then Gelsenkirchen; his father's enlistment in the German military during World War I; attending the Hebrew School of Gelsenkirchen; joining his father's business in 1928; and his fear after hearing Hitler speak. Mr. F. recounts the 1933 Nazi takeover of his father's business; the family's move to Frankfurt; his decision to emigrate to Palestine; seeing his sister in Genoa on his way; and living in Petah? Tik?v?ah, then Haifa; his parents' emigration to Palestine ...

  4. Rosel B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rosel B., who was born in 1916 in Warsaw, Poland. Mrs. B. describes her family's move to Berlin; visits to her grandparents in Poland; attending a Jewish school; their highly cultured lifestyle; warnings about Hitler from 1928 onward; attending secretarial school; forced sale of the family business; her engagement in 1936; marriage in Berlin; emigration to Amsterdam; and the birth of her daughter. She recounts German invasion; betrayal by their housekeeper; receiving a notice for deportation; fleeing with her husband and daughter, via Brussels and Bordeaux, to Nice; b...

  5. Gertrud K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gertrud K., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1923. Mrs. K. recalls a comfortable life; strong Jewish identity; watching mass demonstrations when the Germans marched in; the plundering of her father's business two days later; ransacking of their home; and public humiliation of her father. She remembers Kristallnacht; her father and one brother's arrest; her other brother hiding; several weeks later her father's letter from Dachau; receiving permission to leave on a Kindertransport to Scotland; reluctance to leave with her father in prison; and begging a Gestapo offic...

  6. Julianna L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Julianna L., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1927. In this exceptionally detailed testimony, she recalls a comfortable lifestyle; special privileges due to her father's distinguished service as an officer in World War I; Austrian Jews' disdain for Polish Jews; her family's inability to emigrate to Czechoslovakia after the Anschluss (her mother's family was Czech) due to German occupation of the Sudetenland; watching torchlight Nazi parades; and compulsory "Heil Hitler"'s in school. Mrs. L. remembers her father obtaining United States telephone books and writing let...

  7. Joseph L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph L., who was born in Bielsko-Biala, Poland in 1921, one of four children. Mr. L. recounts attending a German school; training as a metal turner; German invasion; fleeing east with his mother and siblings to L?viv via Krako?w and Rava-Rus?ka; Soviet occupation; working in a Soviet government store; forced transport with his family by cattle car to Panino; forced labor felling trees, then cleaning chimneys; frigid temperatures and sparse food; receiving permission to leave; traveling with his family to Tashkent; encountering cousins and moving to the village where...

  8. Renate R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Renate R., who was born in Berlin in 1923. Mrs. R. describes her family background; life in Germany; and their move to Yugoslavia in 1933; her father's illness and death in 1940; the German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941; and the forced move with her mother and brother to a Jewish section. She describes living with a Yugoslav family and her mother's imprisonment by the Gestapo. Mrs. R. recounts working for the partisans; having to leave the Yugoslav family due to fear of betrayal; thinking of suicide; and being aided by the mother of a school friend who helped arrange...

  9. Hannah D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hannah D., who was born in Du?sseldorf, Germany in 1922. She describes her family's move to Bochum when she was two; her father's death in 1929; expulsion from boarding school in 1937 because she was Jewish; the impact of anti-Jewish restrictions; Kristallnacht; her mother's remarriage in 1939; and emigration to England three weeks later on a kindertransport. Mrs. D. recalls entering nurse's training; internment on the Isle of Man as an "enemy alien"; friendship with a woman who committed suicide; receiving her nursing diploma in 1941; enlisting in the army; the horro...

  10. Gerta T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gerta T., who was born in 1916 in Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (presently Austria), the younger of two children. She recounts her family's orthodoxy; attending school; working as a salesperson; her brother attending medical school; her engagement; the Anschluss; antisemitic harassment; her brother's illegal emigration to France with his wife and her parents, with assistance from a SS doctor he knew; her parents unsuccessful attempt to join him; her fiance? obtaining an English visa for her; emigration to London in August 1938; working as a governess in Plymouth a...

  11. Maliette W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Maliette W., who was born in Strasbourg, France in 1929, one of two children of Polish e?migre?s. She recounts her family's orthodoxy; visiting her grandmother in Poland and other relatives in Germany; attending a French school; vacationing with relatives, but without her father, in Paris-Plage when the war broke out; her father bringing a few possessions from Strasbourg after its ordered evacuation; moving to Vichy; attending school; her relatives leaving for Spain; her family's departure for Marseille; obtaining visas to Martinique; interdiction of their ship by the...

  12. Walter L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Walter L., who was born in Ortelsburg, Germany (presently Szczynto, Poland) in 1922, the elder of two children. He recounts attending school; moving to Ko?nigsberg (presently Kaliningrad, Russia); antisemitic harassment; participating in Makabi ha-tsa?ir; his bar mitzvah in 1935; having to leave school; attending a Zionist agricultural school in Ahrensdorf; hospitalization in Berlin; apprenticing with a dentist; emigrating with his family to the United States via Hamburg in June 1938, with assistance from relatives there; marriage; and the births of four daughters. Mr...

  13. Zygmunt G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Zygmunt G., who was born in Lwo?w, Poland in 1911. He recounts hardships during World War I; attending Polish school; antisemitic harassment; Soviet occupation; draft into the Soviet military in 1941 (he never saw his family again); German invasion; fleeing toward Russia with other soldiers; incarceration in labor camps in the Urals; learning in 1945 that his entire family had been killed; being allowed to return to Wroc?aw, Poland in 1946; traveling illegally to Vienna to escape antisemitism; living in a displaced persons camp, then Linz; emigrating to the United Sta...

  14. Konrad B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Konrad B., who was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1916. Mr. B. describes his childhood and education; his mother's decision to move the family to Paris after Hitler's rise to power; volunteering for the French army; and internment by the French in Nantes in 1939, then by the Germans in a POW camp at Montreuil-Bellay. He details a friendship; his parents' flight from Marseille through Spain and Portugal to the United States; his escape in October 1940; teaching in a Quaker school for children of Spanish refugees in Montauban; serving as a Resistance courier; reunion with ...

  15. Ilse L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ilse L., who was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, in 1922. Mrs. L. recalls her family's move to Berlin when she was five; losing her Christian governess because of the Nuremberg laws; withdrawing from gymnasium in 1937 when Der Sturmer was placed on her desk; and enrolling in a Jewish school where she excelled in foreign languages. She tells of her parents' friendship with her future in-laws; her future father-in-law's professional relationship with Hjalmar Schacht; her sister's departure for the United States in 1938; her father's deportation to Dachau after Krist...

  16. Hildegard W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hildegard W., who was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1912. Mrs. W. describes her liberal Protestant childhood; unfamiliarity with Judaism and antisemitism before marrying a Jew in 1931; early Nazi anti-Semitic acts which they and others did not take seriously; their reluctance to abandon their successful business; the birth of her sons in 1933 and 1935; and a vacation in the Hartz mountains in 1936 during which an encounter with Nazis convinced her husband to emigrate. She recalls increased intimidation; the arrest of a homosexual employee; preparations to leave; and the...

  17. Werner R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Werner R. who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1927. He recalls his father losing his job in 1933; moving to Zagreb; attending public school; their Zionist, rather than Jewish, identity; his father's death in 1940; German invasion in 1941; being baptized with his sister; living separately from his mother and sister because it seemed safer; his sister's escape to Italy; working with the partisans; and arrest by the Gestapo in 1943. Mr. R. tells of jails in Graz and Vienna; transport to Terezi?n; cabarets and opera; German efforts to preserve Jewish books; and transport t...

  18. Rudolph J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rudolph J., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1913. He describes moving to his maternal grandparents' in Wiesbaden during World War I when his father was drafted as a physician; his return to Berlin in 1918; his secular, liberal upbringing; attending university in Berlin; and the beginning of Nazi activity, including the burning of the Reichstag and Hitler's election. He recounts his activity as an anti-Nazi; questioning by storm troopers on an "anti-Jewish day"; leaving Germany for medical school in Genoa, Italy; his family's forced departure from Berlin to Prague; ...

  19. Pierre B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Pierre B., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1935 to a Jewish father and Christian mother. He recalls that his parents did not marry because of the political situation; his father's forced emigration, inability to adjust to life in Brazil, and return to Europe; and traveling with his mother to rejoin his father in Paris. He describes school; roaming the streets of Paris with his best friend Lucien, who died in Auschwitz and about whom he has written poetry; difficulties with other children who considered him German; his independence as a young child; his father's hos...

  20. Maximilian L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Maximilian L., who was born in 1924 in Vienna, Austria. He tells of his father's service for Austria in World War I; hearing of Jewish persecution in Germany from emigre? relatives; his strong Austrian patriotism; harassment of Jews following the Anschluss; being able to leave Austria because his father retained his Czech citizenship; arrival in Paris; satisfaction at fighting back at anti-Semitic incidents in school; family applications for emigration to Australia, Canada, or the United States; and German invasion of Paris. Mr. L. recalls leaving Paris in a massive e...