Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 801 to 816 of 816
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. 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...

  2. 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...

  3. William F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of William F., who was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1915 the only child of a Jewish mother and Catholic father. He recalls attending public school, gymnasium, and university; working as a librarian at Vienna University; the Anschluss in March 1938; his mother's chocolate business being closed due to anti-Jewish restrictions; arrest for not wearing a swastika; incarceration in Dachau; his father's death (he never learned how he died); slave labor digging fortifications; becoming the body carrier for his barrack; keeping some hope despite his belief he would never be releas...

  4. William K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of William K., who was born in Cologne, Germany in 1912. He recalls participation in Zionist organizations as a youth; his parents' divorce; joining his mother and sister in Berlin; employment at a department store; declining a promotion for fear of provoking antisemitism; the public hitting of the store's owner on April 1, 1933; loss of own his job; attempts to leave for Palestine; meeting his future wife and their engagement; and embarkation for Shanghai in October 1938. He recounts assistance from the Japanese upon their arrival; organization of the Jewish community i...

  5. William N. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of William N., who was born in Ga?nsendorf, Austria in 1916. He recalls moving with his family, at the age two, to Czechoslovakia; antisemitic incidents; joining the socialist group "Red Falcon" in Steyr, and later a Zionist youth group in Vienna; being drafted into the Austrian army in 1937; one month's service in the German army after the Anschluss; persecution of Austrian Jews; Abraham Stern organizing illegal emigration from Austria; traveling from a port near Athens to Palestine via Belgrade and Thessalonike?; joining the Irgun, then the Stern Group; and organizing ...

  6. Wolf W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Wolf W., who was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1921. He recalls attending French school; speaking Yiddish at home; living in several European cities from 1929 to 1931; settling in Antwerp; antisemitism in school; apprenticing as a diamond cutter; German invasion; fleeing to Ghent, then Saint-Vincent; living with French farmers; his parents' internment in Re?ce?be?dou in spring 1942; visiting them; arrest; imprisonment in Caussade, whose police chief had tried to warn him to hide; internment in Septfonds, then Drancy; deportation to Janislawice (Johannisdorf); singing Yiddis...

  7. Yakov E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Yakov E., who was born in Poland in approximately 1930, the oldest of three children. He recalls his family's Zionism (an uncle had emigrated to Israel); antisemitic harassment; belonging to Gordonyah; his father's importance in the town; Soviet occupation; leaving on an evacuation train to Kazakhstan in 1941, the only Jewish family to do so (his father was not with them); stopping a few days in Saratov en route; difficulties being accepted by other Jews in Kazakhstan; knowing nothing about the Holocaust; receiving a package from relatives in Israel; attending school;...

  8. Yasha M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Yasha M., who was born in Szczuczyn, Poland (presently Shchuchyn, Belarus) in 1920. He recounts attending school in Vilna; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; Soviet occupation; being sent to Lida to work in a factory; German invasion; fleeing with a friend to Baranovichy; traveling on a train with other Jews to the Warsaw ghetto; escaping; returning to Szczuczyn via Hrodna; forced agricultural labor; a round-up and mass killing of the Jews (he, his father and stepmother were selected for work); transfer to Lida in May 1942; working as a carpenter; escaping to the fore...

  9. Yehuda A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Yehuda A., who was born in Wu?rzburg, Germany in 1924. He recalls his family's liberal orthodoxy; attending school; antisemitic harassment and violence after Hitler's ascent to power; emigration with his family to Palestine in 1935; enlisting in the British army in 1941; smuggling arms and refugees to Palestine after his discharge; joining the Haganah in 1946, then the Palmah? in 1947; serving in the Israel-Arab War; meeting the poet Haim Gouri in the military; beginning to write poetry; marriage in 1949; and writing a novel resulting from his visit to Wu?rzburg and t...

  10. Yorgan L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Yorgan L., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1925. He recounts his father serving in World War I; attending Jewish school; anti-Jewish restrictions; his father losing his job; deportation of friends who were Polish citizens; Kristallnacht; participating in Habonim; collecting money for the Jewish National Fund; agricultural training on a kibbutz in Rüdnitz; moving to Paderborn; forced labor; learning his parents had been deported in December 1942; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in March 1943; transfer to Monowitz; slave labor; transfer to the hospital in Auschwit...

  11. Yvonne S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Yvonne S., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1927. She recalls her family's move to Paris in 1933; a comfortable life in Neuilly; attending Catholic school; her parents' divorce; moving to Holland with her mother and sister in 1938 to join her grandparents and other relatives; a brief stay in Paris; return to Amsterdam; German invasion; anti-Jewish measures including compulsory wearing of the yellow star and expulsion from school; attending Jewish school; disappearances of schoolmates; her grandparents' arrest and deportation (she never saw them again); going into hi...

  12. Zipporah S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Zipporah S., who was born in Krako?w, Poland in 1938. She tells of German occupation; her family's move to the Bochnia ghetto; her father buying false papers; being smuggled into Hungary with a paid guide; registering as Christian Polish refugees; receiving help from a Hungarian woman (she did not know they were Jews); moving to Budapest; the woman arranging for her, her sister, and cousin to live in a Swedish convent while her parents remained in hiding (no one knew they were Jews); liberation by Soviet troops; reunion with her parents; moving to Prague; emigrating t...

  13. Zlata G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Zlata G., who was born in Kostopol, Poland in 1921. She recalls the German invasion in September 1939; Soviet occupation; German invasion in 1941; fleeing with her brother upon the advice of retreating Soviet soldiers; finding her sister at the Soviet border; traveling to Voronezh where they had a cousin; two months later traveling east by freight train to escape the advancing German army; her sister and brother-in-law leaving the train in Kzyl-Orda due to their son's illness; living with her brother in Samarqand; extreme deprivation; a typhus epidemic; her brother-in...

  14. Zohn M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Zohn M., who was drafted into the United States Army and served in the 103rd Infantry Division, 409th Regiment in World War II. He recounts liberating slave labor camps in Bavaria; entering Landsberg concentration camp; stacks of corpses; encountering a group of camp prisoners being evacuated; describing them as walking skeletons; entering Dachau after its liberation; a former prisoner guiding him through the camp; and screening refugees moving into displaced persons camp. He shows photographs and items from the camps, a book about his regiment, and reads from a lette...

  15. Zoltan G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Zoltan G., who was born in Nagykaroly, Hungary (presently Carei, Romania) in 1908. Mr. G. recalls his orthodox home as one of ten children; briefly attending Yeshiva; cordial relations between Christians and Jews; joining an older brother in Paris in 1922 to become an apprentice in the handbag industry; building a successful business employing over 1,000 people; marriage in 1936; his son's birth in 1937; and the birth of twins in 1940. He describes leaving Paris for Vichy France prior to German occupation in 1940; living in Toulouse and Grenoble; buying visas from the...

  16. 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...