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Displaying items 1 to 20 of 816
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Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. 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.

  2. Kurt and Trude S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Kurt S., who was born in 1904 in Oelde, Westphalia, and his wife Trude S., who was born in Wiesbaden. Mr. S. recalls that his family was the only Jewish one in the neighborhood; antisemitism during high school; passing his law exams in 1928-1929; the boycott of Jewish businesses; losing his job as a result of the Nuremberg laws; and taking a new job in Wiesbaden where he then met Mrs. S. Mrs. S. speaks of her childhood memories and religious observance; nationalist protest in 1930; and anti-Jewish actions in 1934. Mr S. describes his arrest during Kristallnacht and th...

  3. Gregory F. Holocaust testimony

    Video testimony of Gregory F., a non-Jew, who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1941. He relates experiences as a "displaced person" in his own country when he and his family were relocated by the Germans from Vienna to a small Austrian town.

  4. 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 ...

  5. Frank S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Frank S., who was born in Breslau, Germany, in 1921. He describes his childhood in Breslau and the changes which he experienced, particularly in school after 1933. He also details his apprenticeship, at the age of fifteen, to a Nazi electrician; the experience of Kristallnacht, during which he was protected by his gentile cleaning lady; his emigration to England in 1938, where he, a German citizen, was confined as an enemy alien after the outbreak of the war; and the effect of these experiences on his personality.

  6. Betty C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Betty C., who was born in Berlin in 1910. She tells of her happy life in prewar Berlin and describes the rise of antisemitism in Germany, culminating in Kristallnacht, after which she, her husband, and her infant daughter fled the country and emigrated to the United States.

  7. Celia K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Celia K., who was born in Szarkowszczyzna, a small town near Vilna, Poland, in 1923. In this extraordinarily detailed and vivid testimony, Mrs. K. describes her prewar education; the German occupation; the ghettoization of her town; and her work there as a waitress in the officers' dining hall. She tells of her transfer to the Glubokoye ghetto; being tortured for refusing to become the mistress of a Kommandant, and the psychological effects of this experience; assisting others to flee the ghetto; and her own escape, with the aid of a Polish farmer. She relates spendin...

  8. Harry T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Harry T., who was born in Giessen, Germany in 1921. Mr. T. describes growing up as the only Jewish boy in Zu?rbach, a farm village near Frankfurt; the rise of antisemitism and anti-Jewish activities; his training in Frankfurt to become a cabinetmaker; his return home after Kristallnacht; slave labor; and leaving his family in Frankfurt in 1941. He tells of his transport from Berlin to Barcelona, Spain; his imprisonment there and then in an internment camp near the French border; his release by the Quakers; and his emigration, via Portugal, to the United States. The ef...

  9. Oscar R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Oscar R., who was born in Vienna of Hungarian parents in 1910. He describes Vienna on the eve of the German invasion; his medical studies in an atmosphere of increasing antisemitism; his marriage to a fellow medical student in 1937; and his emigration to the United States (via Copenhagen) in 1938. He tells of his voluntary enlistment in the American army after he became a United States citizen and his 1945 arrival at Mauthausen, after the Germans had already fled, where he remained for a month. Showing photographs which he took at the time, he discusses the condition ...

  10. Peter G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Peter G., a distinguished scholar and professor of history, who was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1923. Professor G. describes his childhood and education; his parents' atheism; the Nuremberg laws; the different opinions people held about the Nazis; his family's haphazard plans to emigrate; Kristallnacht; obtaining passage to Cuba; his two year stay in Havana; and his emigration to the United States. He also discusses the opposing theories of whether the Holocaust could happen again; the impact that the refugees had on United States intellectual life; and his thoughts o...

  11. Emma S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Emma S., a singer who was born in Russia, emigrated to the United States in infancy, and at the time of her interviews lived in both Israel and the United States. She tells of her musical education and training and the beginning of her career. She details her motivation for joining a cultural delegation sponsored by the World Jewish Congress which toured displaced persons camps in Europe in 1946. She recalls the devastation she encountered upon arrival; the vitality of the survivors in the more than fifty camps where she sang, including Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Landsbe...

  12. Gustav R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gustav R., who was born in Darmstadt, Germany in 1929. He speaks of his childhood in pre-war Germany; differences in the attitudes of his parents towards Judaism; the rise of Nazism in Germany; his father's arrest and imprisonment in Buchenwald in the wake of Kristallnacht; the difficulties encountered by his family in attempts to leave Germany; the family's eventual emigration to the United States after spending one and one-half years in Cuba; and the influences his wartime experiences had on his later life, particularly on his relationship with his children.

  13. Sigmund W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sigmund W., who was born in Berlin in 1921 and fled with his parents to Antwerp, Belgium in 1939. He tells of their flight to Brussels after an earlier failed attempt to flee to France; his flight to Vichy France that same year; and his capture and internment at Drancy. He recalls the journey in boxcars to Ottmuth in Silesia, from where he was sent to the Chevigner slave labor camp near Chrzano?w and his transfer to Annaberg, near Auschwitz in March, 1943, and to Blechhammer six weeks later. The conditions and organization of the latter, where Mr. W. remained until Fe...

  14. Niusia A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Niusia A., who was born in Krako?w, Poland, circa 1924. She describes the changes caused by the German takeover of Poland; her family's move to the nearby town of Bochnia; the ghettoization of Bochnia and the subsequent liquidation of the ghetto; and her and her mother's return to Krako?w to avoid deportation (her father had died before the war). She also tells of living on the Aryan side in Warsaw and her journey from Warsaw to Budapest, where she remained until the German invasion of Hungary; her capture while trying to escape to Romania; and her detention in a Roma...

  15. Bronia and Nathan L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Bronia L. and her son Nathan L. who was born in Danzig in 1936. Mrs. L. speaks of the deterioration of the Jewish situation in 1936; the birth of her son in the same year; the miscarriage she suffered as a result of a beating by Nazis in 1939; and her subsequent hospitalization, during which she was sterilized without her knowledge or consent. She describes leaving Danzig in 1940 and the three-month-long journey by ship to Palestine, where she suffered an emotional breakdown and a typhus epidemic claimed the life of her sister. Mrs. L. also relates their arrival in Pa...

  16. Ena L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ena L., who was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1934. She tells of her life in Belgrade before and during the war and of her flight to northern Italy with her mother, sister, and other relatives. She explains how her family was able to live openly as Jews in a small village near Vittorio Veneto, aided, as were other Jewish refugees, by the Italian government. She describes her life in Amandola where her family fled after Mussolini's fall and where they remained, "passing" as Catholics, for about two years until just before liberation, when they hid in the mountains. ...

  17. Joseph Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph Z., who was born in Vienna in 1918. He describes his childhood and youth, relating instances of antisemitism; the political situation in Austria before the Anschluss; the German occupation of Austria (which forced him to leave medical school); his subsequent training in tailoring and English and work in his father's tailor shop; his emigration to the United States via Paris and London with his parents and two younger sisters; and his service in the American army (he was drafted in 1942) interrogating German prisoners.

  18. Gitta L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gitte L., who was born in Vilna in 1893. Mrs. L. recalls the outbreak of World War I after her graduation from gymnasium; her training and years of work as a nurse in refugee camps; studying at the University of Leningrad; and her emigration to Vienna to marry her fiance?. She tells of her political activity in Vienna; antisemitism; Kristallnacht in Sassnitz, when her husband was beaten by a mob and interrogated, and she was imprisoned with him (but released after a short time); her husband's escape with the help of a Nazi soldier; their emigration to the United State...

  19. Albert, Gina, and Kurt K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Albert K., who was born in Poland in 1903; Gina K., who was born in Vienna in 1909; and their son Kurt K., who was born in Vienna in 1937. Married in Vienna in 1937, Mr. and Mrs. K. describe their pre-war life in Vienna; the birth of their son; and the German invasion and conditions under German occupation. They tell of their flight from Vienna to Antwerp, where they remained until the German occupation of Belgium; their arrest in Antwerp; and an aborted attempt to deport them to Poland, which landed them instead on a farm in Belgium. They relate being sent back to An...

  20. Lois and Abraham J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lois J., who was born in a small town near Vilna, Poland in 1927, and her husband Abraham J., who was born in a small town in Poland in 1921. Mrs. J. discusses prewar Jewish life in her home town; the Russian occupation in 1939; the German takeover in 1941 and the ensuing anti-Jewish legislation; ghettoization of her town and conditions under German rule; and her escape into the forest, where she lived with a group of 300 partisans and refugees from other ghettos. Mr. J. describes family life before the war; the displacement of his family following Russian occupation;...