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Displaying items 81 to 100 of 816
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Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Johannes S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Johannes S., a non-Jew who was born in 's-Gravenzande, Netherlands in 1923. He describes growing up in a predominantly Protestant town with little awareness of the situation of European Jewry; the influx of Jewish refugees to the Netherlands following Crystal Night; the relief efforts organized by his school; the outbreak of war, bombing, and the German victory over the Netherlands in four days; and the German occupation with its anti-Jewish decrees. He recalls acts of active and passive resistance; hiding on a farm in Deurningen to avoid conscription into the army; t...

  2. Samuel B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Samuel B., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1933. Mr. B. recounts his childhood perspective on the Russian occupation of Vilna; the arrival of the German army; and German anti-Jewish activities. He recalls arrival at Vilna's "old ghetto" with his parents; hiding outside of the ghetto in a monastery, through the arrangement of a baptized aunt; and being forced by circumstances to smuggle themselves back into the ghetto. He describes conditions within the ghetto; the ghetto's school; his own private education; his artistic activities within the ghetto; and his family's ...

  3. Paul G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paul G., who was born in Vienna in 1909. He recalls his medical education; prewar antisemitism in Vienna; his unsuccessful attempt to get help emigrating to England in 1936; the German occupation of Austria (Anschluss); his escape from Austria to join his mother in Czechoslovakia; and his departure for the United States, after many attempts, two days before the deadline. He relates his arrival and adjustment to life in the United States, where he became a dentist; the death of his father; the fate of other family members; and his anxiety and guilt feelings about not b...

  4. Anneliese R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anneliese R., who was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1910. Ms. R. tells of her close, non-observant family; successive moves between 1914 and 1921; studying languages and history of art at Berlin University; switching to archaeology in 1932 after returning from a summer in Italy; studies at the German Archaeological Institute in Rome after Hitler's accession to power; receiving her doctorate in 1936; and training as a nurse in Geneva when she could not find a teaching position. She recalls her roommate's arrest before Hitler's visit to Rome in 1938; having to stay with ...

  5. Elsa R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Elsa R., who was born in Lu?beck, Germany, in 1908. Ms. R. tells of leaving her family in 1929 to work in Munich; antisemitism; disillusionment with her Christian fiance, who alone knew she was Jewish; and obtaining a post in Turin, Italy in 1935 with the help of an anti-Nazi company official. She relates visiting her sister in Rome; friendship with her firm's Turin representative; the 1938 laws expelling all foreign Jews; unsuccessful attempts to obtain an American visa; her friends' bribery of police, so her file might be "lost"; arrest; transport in 1940 to a women...

  6. 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...

  7. Marion L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Marion L., who was born in Bielefeld, Germany in 1924 and raised in nearby Herford. Mrs. L. recalls her comfortable upper-middle-class childhood; playing in her father's tobacco warehouse; a non-Jewish girlfriend who refused to see her after joining a Nazi organization; a family employee's role in her home's looting on Kristallnacht; her father's return from incarceration at Sachsenhausen; being sent by her parents on a chidren's transport to Holland in 1939; and living in an orphanage with 100 other refugee children. She details the 1940 German attack; a prominent Ch...

  8. Eve S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eve S., who was born in Hannover, Germany, in 1926. She describes her childhood in Berlin in her large, closely-knit family; their emphasis on education; her socially responsible father (with whom she was particularly close) and grandfather; and her parents' anxiety about the rise of Nazism. She recalls her belief at age six that simply inviting Hitler to dinner would convince him that she and her family were "good people." She recounts her first childhood encounter with antisemitism; the family's experience during Kristallnacht in 1938; her parents' search for foster...

  9. Linda F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Linda F., who was born in Szyd?owiec, Poland in 1927. She recalls her large extended family; attending public school; helping her father in the family butcher shop; assisting German Jewish refugees; believing events in Germany would not impact them; and the shock of German invasion. Mrs. F. recounts round-ups of children and men; confiscation of the family business; secretly slaughtering meat for friends; her father's beating and arrest (she never saw him again); her mother's disappearance; reporting for forced labor in 1942 in her sister's place; transport to Skarz?y...

  10. Eve F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eve F., who was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1923. She recalls the prewar emigration to the United States of many members of her mother's family; her own identity as both German and Jew; the edict barring Jewish children from schools and the increasingly tense atmosphere in her own school; the belief held by many Jews that Hitler's antisemitism was temporary; and learning of the deportation of Communists to concentration camps as early as 1933. She relates emigrating with her family to New Orleans in December 1933; the assimilated life styles of her relatives...

  11. Gerda K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gerda K., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1911. Mrs. K. recounts a happy childhood; antisemitic incidents; laboratory work in a Catholic hospital; she and her father losing their jobs when Hitler came to power in 1933; her father leaving Germany; joining him in Paris with her mother; her mother's death in 1934; obtaining jobs and adjusting to life in Paris, realizing they would not return to Berlin as they originally thought; German invasion; a round-up and two to three weeks in the Ve?lodrome d'Hiver; and transport to Gurs. She recalls over four months in Gurs; re...

  12. Gertrud W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gertrud W., who was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1915. She describes her pleasant childhood and positive feelings about being Czech; social work school; a job in Brno; German occupation of Sudetenland; conversion to Catholicism with her future husband; return to Prague; deciding to emigrate with her future husband; receiving her father's permission (the only time she saw him cry); smuggling themselves into Poland in May 1939; living under British protection in Krako?w; and marriage by a Catholic priest. Mrs. W. describes the outbreak of war; walking to Brest-Lito...

  13. Howard F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Howard F., who was born in Kaiserslautern, Germany, in 1910. Mr. F. speaks of his childhood in a "typical German-Jewish, upper-middle-class family"; his father's friendship with department store magnate David May; regarding his best friend's anti-Semitic remarks as a fact of life; difficulties seeking membership in a local club; attending Nazi rallies to learn the identities of regional party leaders; attending Munich University, where he represented Jews in the student parliament; returning to his parents' home in Saarbru?cken after graduation; and leaving his first ...

  14. Loni K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Loni K., who was born in Essen, Germany, in 1913. Mrs. K. recalls illegally emigrating to Holland in mid-1933; working as a servant and a legal secretary in Amsterdam; German occupation; her mother and sisters' emigration (her father was deported in 1942 and died in Theresienstadt); imposition of antisemitic restrictions; protection from deportation because she worked for the Joodse Raad; transport to Westerbork in mid-1943; transport to Theresienstadt in February 1944; working in a coffin factory; and details of her arrival at Auschwitz in May 1944. She tells of tran...

  15. William F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of William F., who was born deaf in a small town near Sa?toraljau?jhely, Hungary, in 1910. Mr. F. describes his childhood in a large family (two brothers were also deaf); learning from his father to read Hebrew for his bar mitzvah; being self-taught because he lacked a formal education; becoming a leatherworker; his pride at living independently in Budapest at age eighteen; growing antisemitism; fleeing to Czechoslovakia in late 1937; courtship and marriage; and establishing a business in Pies?t?any. He recalls a Christian maid who helped him and his wife avoid deportati...

  16. Nelly M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Nelly M., who was born deaf in Vienna, Austria in 1929. Mrs. F. describes her household comprised of her deaf uncle, mother, and younger sister, and her hearing grandmother; attending a school for the deaf at about age three; learning to read lips; and her mother's divorce (her father was deaf). She recalls the Nazi arrival in Vienna; being forced to leave school; teachers advising her mother to leave Austria; seeing signs in parks and movies reading "Jews forbidden"; an assault by a Nazi youth; witnessing the public humiliation of older Jewish men; learning to read E...

  17. Hilda R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hilda R., who was born deaf in Vienna, Austria in 1904. She recalls her family; starting work at age sixteen as a seamstress; her marriage to a deaf man; her two daughters; her husband's neglect of the children because they were deaf (he had hoped for hearing children); their divorce; emigration to the United States in 1940 with assistance from a brother already there; having to remain at Ellis Island because they were deaf; and assistance received from the New York Society for the Deaf. Mrs. R. discusses her strong faith in God; gratitude to the United States; visiti...

  18. Henry F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henry F., who was born in Meerholz, Germany in 1919. He recalls his father, a kosher butcher, his mother, a dressmaker and an older brother; attending a Jewish school for the deaf in Berlin from the age of five for ten years; Nazi harassment; graduation in 1935; and apprenticeship to a tailor in Frankfurt, despite his desire to become an engineer, because of anti-Jewish restrictions. He describes his brother's emigration to the United States in 1937; knowing many deaf people who were sterilized by Nazi law; moving to Mannheim; difficulties obtaining documents (he show...

  19. Lore F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lore F., who was born in Thu?ngen, Germany in 1931. She recalls pleasant memories as the only child in a wealthy home; fond relations with cousins; brief attendance at a school for the deaf in Berlin; withdrawal from school after a few weeks because her mother thought she was too young; return to school in 1937 for six months; and withdrawal again because of rumors that handicapped people were being sterilized. Mrs. F. describes observing expressions of fear everywhere; neighbors being taken to jail; her father's emigration to the United States; a physical examination...

  20. David B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of David B., who was born in Floss, Germany in 1910. He relates being orphaned at a young age; his first five years in a happy household of relatives; attending a school for the deaf in Munich (he was not born deaf) from ages five to thirteen; schools in Jena for two years; his older siblings' emigration to Israel and the United States in 1935; training as a porcelain decorator; work as a designer in Floss; loss of his job due to Nazi restrictions; returning to Munich in 1938; Crystal Night; and internment in Dachau. Mr. B. describes camp life; release four weeks later; ...