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 161 to 180 of 816
Search result ordering
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Leo B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leo B., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1921. He recalls his father's death when he was nine; Viennese cultural life; smuggling himself to Belgium after the Anschluss at his mother's urging (due to the perception that it was more dangerous for males); attending trade school; German invasion; and deportation to southern France in an exchange for Belgians. Mr. B. relates conditions in Saint Cyprien concentration camp; a futile attempt to enter Switzerland; incarceration in Drancy; boarding a transport to Auschwitz on November 6, 1942; escape from the train while stil...

  2. Franz F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Franz F., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1925, one of two brothers. He recounts his family's relative affluence; antisemitic harassment at school; visiting grandparents in Opava; expulsion from his scout troop; joining Makabi ha-tsaĘťir; the Anschluss; joining a hachsharah in Germany; visiting Berlin; his brother joining a hachsharah in France; Kristallnacht; visiting his parents in Vienna; emigration to Palestine via Vienna and Trieste in 1939; receiving letters from his parents through the Red Cross (later, the letters stopped); enlisting in the British army; se...

  3. Maria S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Maria S., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1926, the younger of two sisters. She recalls her mother's death in 1937; her sister's emigration to the United States in 1938; completing primary school in 1939; German invasion; bombings; escaping with her father three months later to the Soviet zone; living in Białystok and a nearby town; deportation with her father to Siberia; forced labor in a forest; the supervisor helping her avoid the difficult work; being allowed to leave after the German invasion; moving to Tashkent; marriage to a Polish Jew; working as a telephon...

  4. Thea S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Thea S., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1921, an only child. She recalls visiting relatives in Poland; living with her mother in Germany for a year in the late 1920s; attending gymnasium; participating in Maccabi and other Zionist organizations; the Anschluss in March 1938; dismissal of her Jewish teachers; prohibition from employing their non-Jewish maid; Nazi harassment; being forced to move many times; her boyfriend's arrest on Kristallnacht; non-Jewish neighbors hiding her father; obtaining British travel documents with assistance from an uncle in London; trav...

  5. Frieda R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Frieda R., who was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1921, the youngest of four sisters. She recalls participation in Maccabi; working in her father's business; German invasion in May 1940; fleeing with her sister and her children to Brussels; fleeing with her parents and fiance? to France; being sent to a village near Toulouse; her fiance? working in Lyon; marriage; visiting her nephew in Dourgne; her oldest sister and family emigrating to Cuba; her parents' deportation (she never saw them again); obtaining false papers in 1943; her son's birth; a non-Jewish woman helping ...

  6. Alex P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alex P., who was born in Košice, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1923 to an assimilated, affluent family. He recounts moving to Berlin with his parents and brother in 1926; attending public school; a non-Jewish teacher defending him from harassment; expulsion from public school; attending a Jewish school (Goldschmidt Schule); beatings by Hitler Youth; visiting his grandmother in Czechoslovakia; his bar mitzvah; emigration to England; attending schools in Newhaven, then London; emigration to join relatives in the United States in 1940; military draft; serving ...

  7. Gerry S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gerry S., who was born in Oberlauringen, Germany in 1935. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; his father's arrest on Kristallnacht; his family's emigration to Oslo in March 1939 with assistance from an uncle who was a rabbi there; cordial relations with non-Jews; German invasion in April 1940; his uncle's arrest and deportation in 1942 (he did not survive); his father hiding in a hospital pretending to need surgery; a Norwegian policeman informing his mother of an impending round-up; the underground arranging to hide him, his mother, and sister with non-Jews, then smu...

  8. Lusia G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lusia G., who was born in Brody, Poland in 1922. She recounts attending public school; Soviet occupation in 1939; German invasion in 1941; her father instructing her, her brother, sister, and her sister's fiancé to evacuate with the Soviet troops; transport to Kursk; working on a collective farm; her sister's marriage; her brother's and brother-in-law's military draft; moving to Saratov; food and clothing shortages; her brother-in-law's return; his earning extra food; the birth of her sister's daughter (she died two days later); moving to Poltava; her sister's depart...

  9. Nicholas A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Nicholas A., who was born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia in 1935. He recalls the tightly-knit Jewish community; fleeing with his mother to Italian-occupied Split; arrival of two uncles and his father; an Italian arranging their passage to Trieste on a troop ship; hiding in various places in the Macerata region from 1941 to 1944, including Sarnona, Loro Piceno, Ascoli Piceno, and Porto San Giorgio; his Catholic baptism; receiving false identity papers; police warnings of round-ups; his sister's birth in 1944; liberation; living in Milan and Rome; emigration to the United States...

  10. Marianne B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Marianne B., who was born in Breslau, Germany. She recalls family participation in the city's high culture; her father's strong German identity; the importance of music in the family; their affluent lifestyle; emigration to Paris to join her future husband; and her sister's marriage in England in 1938. Ms. B. describes learning of her father's incarceration in Buchenwald; his release as a broken man; her parents emigrating to England; her father's hospitalization in a mental institution; his release; subsequent suicide attempts; and his internment on the Isle of Wight...

  11. Helga F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Helga F., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1926. She recounts increasing anti-Jewish actions; expulsion from public school in 1936; attending Jewish school; visiting relatives in Sweden who warned them to emigrate; her sense that Kristallnacht marked the end of her childhood; fleeing to Paris with her parents; her father's incarceration as an enemy alien prior to German invasion; his return after the invasion; his death from a heart attack in 1942; anti-Jewish regulations; being rounded-up with her mother in the Ve?lodrome d'hiver; her mother's release due to an inf...

  12. Hal L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hal L., who was born in Wanne-Eickel, Germany in 1923. He recalls his traditional and strict upbringing; his father's medical practice; non-Jewish friends; anti-Semitic incidents in school; expulsion of Jewish students in 1936; attending Jewish high school in Cologne, where he lived with an aunt; and emigrating alone to the United States in 1937. Mr. L. recounts living with a Jewish family in Washington, D.C.; corresponding with his family; their arrival in 1939; assistance from the Baron de Hirsch Fund to purchase a chicken farm in Woodbine, New Jersey; his father's ...

  13. Edith K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Edith K., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1919. She recalls her sheltered childhood in a religious family; the Anschluss; anti-Jewish restrictions and violence; Kristallnacht; marriage in 1938; joining her husband in Cyprus; evacuation by the British government from Cyprus to Palestine, then Cairo; traveling by ship to Dar es Salaam in November 1941; transfer with her husband to Shinyanga, then Tabora; their emigration to the United States (with assistance from her twin sisters who had emigrated earlier); and her subsequent life. Mrs. K. discusses recently learning...

  14. Edith F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Edith F., who was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1920. She recounts her wealthy, assimilated home; attending Czech and German schools; private religious instruction at home; meeting her future husband at age fifteen; moving to London in 1938 when Austria was annexed by Germany; frequently returning to Prague, sometimes without her parents; leaving immediately after occupation with her future husband (his family remained, were deported, and killed); letters from relatives in Theresienstadt; leaving London for Exeter after the war began; emigrating to Brazil; marriag...

  15. Frances L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Frances L., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1921. She recalls her assimilated and wealthy family's disbelief that conditions in Germany would impact them; the Anschluss; anti-Jewish restrictions; her brother's emigration to Belgium; emigrating with her father to Amsterdam in 1938; her mother joining them later (she had refused to emigrate earlier); German invasion in May 1940; marriage, and moving to Tilburg. Mrs. L. recounts her brother's escape attempt through France (he perished in Auschwitz); her son's birth in 1942; hiding in several locations over the next tw...

  16. 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...

  17. Rabbi Henri O. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henri O., who was born in Offenbach am Main, Germany in 1913. He recalls that his family moved to Germany in 1913 from Poland; his father's arrest during World War I because he was a Polish citizen; growing up in Aschaffenburg; teaching Judaism in Fulda and Tann after he graduated from a yeshiva in Frankfurt in 1933; his father's deportation to Poland from France, where he had fled after Kristallnacht; seeing his father for the last time when his father traveled through Frankfurt to Poland; his brother's and mother's brief arrest due to their Polish citizenship and th...

  18. Sonia R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sonia R., who was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1929 of a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father. She describes her father's anti-Nazi activities; Gestapo harassment; emigration to Italy, then France, in January 1933 because of her father's politics; her mother's art work; expulsion from France nine months later; her father's return to Germany and her mother's refusal, leading to their divorce; moving with her mother to San Remo; her third sibling's birth; receiving government orders in October 1939 to leave because they were foreigners; a German consular official helpin...

  19. Henry S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Harry S., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1921, one of two children. He recounts attending school; his older brother's death from illness; the Anschluss; expropriation of his father's business; antisemitic harassment; his father obtaining visas for Panama through his brother in Holland; traveling to Amsterdam; German invasion in 1940; working at a rubber plant; a general strike in 1941; hiding during a raid (several friends were captured and deported); traveling illegally to Belgium with a group of friends; his parents joining him; being smuggled with a group to Pa...

  20. Erika M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Erika M., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1932. She recalls her happy, observant and prosperous life in a close, extended family; attending Jewish school; hearing discussions of the situation in Vienna (her grandmother lived there); the outbreak of war; harboring Polish Jewish refugees; round-ups of non-Hungarian Jews; her father's conscription into a forced labor battalion; German occupation in March 1944; anti-Jewish measures, including the yellow star; moving with her parents into her grandmother's apartment, a Jewish-designated house; her grandfather's arrest...