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

  1. Henry C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henry C., who was born in the United States. Mr. C. describes his Yiddish and Workmen's Circle background; attending college; being drafted into the United States Army in 1944; eight months of combat in Europe; working at the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration Headquarters; discharge from the army in 1946; working for UNRRA as a civilian, managing Fo?hrenwald displaced persons camp; frequent problems maintaining the physical facilities resulting in poor sanitation; an incident when U.S. soldiers harassed Jewish refugees; his attempts to improve co...

  2. Hilda S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hilda S., who was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1930. She recalls her brother's emotional illness; attending a Jewish school (the Philanthropin) due to the Nuremberg laws; Kristallnacht; her father's arrest; his release since he had a United States visa; and leaving with her brother on a children's transport to Brussels. She describes living in an orphanage; her brother's transfer to Ghell, a town which cared for handicapped people; German invasion; her guilt thinking she endangered the orphanage (there were six Jewish children there); leaving school in 1942 when it b...

  3. Tomas K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Tomas K., who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1929, the younger of two children. He recalls cordial relations with non-Jews; harassment by Hitler Youth starting in 1939; a German neighbor warning him when it was dangerous to go out; expulsion from school; not wearing the yellow star after being harassed for having it; eviction from their apartment in 1940; their landlord allowing them to stay briefly, then reporting them to Hlinka guard; confiscation of the family business; his sister being smuggled to Hungary when deportations started; ...

  4. Leyba E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leyba E., who was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1919. He recounts abandonment by his father when he was two; attending Jewish schools, then a technical school; never attending synagogue or celebrating Jewish holidays, though knowing about them; working in Borodyanka; marriage; German invasion in 1941; fleeing through the Soviet Union; living with his wife, mother, and brother in Bugurusland; military draft; participating in breaking the siege of Leningrad (Saint Petersburg); being wounded in January 1943; hospitalization in Ekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk); demobilization and ret...

  5. Elias R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Elias R., who was born in Thessalonike?, Greece in 1932. He recalls details of Jewish life; traveling with his mother to Athens for his uncle's wedding; remaining there in order to be under Italian occupation (Thessalonike? was under German control); having his brother smuggled to Athens; returning to Thessalonike?; ghettoization; obtaining exit documents from Spain (his mother was Spanish); hiding during round-ups; his father's deportation (he did not return); escaping with his mother and brother to Athens with help from the underground; departing in a German militar...

  6. Hilde G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hilde G., who was born in Boppard, Germany in 1926. She recalls a comfortable childhood; attending a Catholic school until 1936, when the nuns could no longer guarantee her safety; her older sister attending school in Cologne; her parents' decision to send her to England; her mother accompanying her to Spain (her father wept at their departure in Cologne); living with a Jewish family in Nottingham; attending private school; working for her foster parents from age fourteen due to the labor shortage caused by the war; hearing from her parents in 1941 after a two year si...

  7. Gabriele S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gabriele S., who was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1914. In addition to information included in a previously recorded testimony (HVT-236), Ms. S. recalls an isolated childhood in an affluent, assimilate home; her father's death in 1927; her school's closure after the Nazis came to power; training as a social worker in Frankfurt; working in an orphanage in Hamburg; spending a year in England from 1935-36; returning, knowing the risks, to help other Jews emigrate; her brothers' emigration; her emigration to the United States (her mother and sister also got out); assistanc...

  8. Friedel M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Friedel M., who was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in approximately 1921. She recounts her family's orthodoxy; being raised by their maid; her father's death when she was six; spending Jewish holidays with grandparents in Bierstadt; attending a Jewish school; her mother's remarriage in 1933; antisemitic harassment, restrictions, and boycotts; fearing arrest during her brother's bar mitzvah in 1935, since gatherings were prohibited; his emigration to the United States to join her mother's sister; obtaining U.S. visas in Stuttgart; emigration with her mother and ste...

  9. Reuven L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Reuven L., who was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1927. He describes his father's prominence as a lawyer and his mother's as a gynecologist; his father's assistance to Jewish refugees from Germany and Poland; Soviet occupation; his father's arrest as a capitalist; Lithuanians killing Jews after Germany invaded the Soviet Union prior to entering Kaunas; ghettoization; forced labor at the airport, hunger, and killings; his parents arranging their escape with assistance from a priest; hiding in a monastery, then, using false papers, on a farm and with a Lithuanian woman; f...

  10. Henry W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henry W., who was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1927. He recounts moving to Mainz in 1929; his sister's birth in 1933; returning to Frankfurt in 1934; emigration to Paris in 1935; persecution as a foreigner and German; outbreak of war in 1939; his father's internment as an enemy alien; his bar mitzvah in 1940 (his father could not attend); German invasion in May 1940; escaping with his family to unoccupied France; living in Chartre, Bellac, and Limoges; his father's visits (he was detained nearby); hiding when non-Jewish neighbors warned them of German raids; ...

  11. Isaiah W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rabbi Isaiah W., who was born in Bad Kissingen, Germany in 1915, to a rabbinical family with a long German history. He recalls attending gymnasium in Wu?rzburg; rabbinical studies in Tels?iai and Berlin; his father's death in 1935; appointment to the rabbinate in Bad Kissingen, then a joint appointment in Ansbach; a summer visit to Palestine in 1938; being forced to watch the synagogue burn during Kristallnacht; imprisonment in Wu?rzburg; transfer to Dachau; humiliating exercises, long appells, and inadequate food; release after a few weeks provided he leave Germany; ...

  12. Simcha S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Simcha S., who was born in Pu?awy, Poland in 1914. He recalls working in Warsaw; antisemitism stimulated by Nazi propaganda; participation in the Polish Socialist party and Worker's Theater; German invasion; fleeing to Soviet occupied Poland; working in Lv?ov, then in a coal mine; becoming a Soviet citizen; being drafted and wounded after the German invasion; demobilization; and moving to Tashkent. Mr. S. recounts learning one brother had been killed by Ukrainians; enlisting in Anders' Polish army which went to Palestine, then Italy; enlisting in Britain's Jewish Brig...

  13. Heinz W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Heinz W., who was born in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany in 1920, the second of three sons. He recounts his father's World War I service in the Russian army and capture in Germany as a prisoner of war (he remained there and established a successful tailoring business); difficulties finding a quorum for his bar mitzvah due to laws against Jews gathering together; his father's trip to Palestine in 1934, then sending his older brother to school there; antisemitic harassment; expulsion from school and an electrician's apprenticeship due to anti-Jewish laws; reluctantly jo...

  14. Estera K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Estera K., who was born in what was to become Poland in 1915. She recalls pervasive antisemitism; trying to persuade her family to emigrate (they had lived there for generations); joining a cousin in the Netherlands; enjoying the lack of antisemitism; receiving mail from her mother until 1941; deciding to go into hiding when ordered to report to Westerbork; hiding with her husband's non-Jewish friends in the Hague; placing her two-year-old son elsewhere; visiting him occasionally; moving several times; obtaining false papers from the underground; reunion with her son ...

  15. 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...

  16. Henri K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henri K., who was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1926. He recounts his parents' and their siblings' emigration from Poland during World War I; speaking Yiddish at home; a priest espousing antisemitic ideas during religious instruction in public school; German invasion; fleeing with his family to Revelles, France; after three months, round-up with other non-citizens in Cape la Hague for six months; internment in Rivesaltes; release in February 1942 due to his Parisian aunt's bribes; returning from Vierzon to Brussels, using false papers; his sister's deportation (he neve...

  17. Jacob R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jacob R., who was born in Dobromyl?, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (presently Ukraine) in 1906. He recalls speaking Yiddish and German at home; his mother's death; his father's service in the first World War; abuse by Russian forces; becoming part of Poland after the war; antisemitism; moving to Berlin in 1926; the emigration of two siblings to Palestine; living in Ostende and Antwerp; expulsion because he was Polish; moving to Barcelona; burying dead from the civil war; moving to Paris in April 1939; German invasion; traveling to Orle?ans, Bordeaux, and Toulouse; arrest ...

  18. 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...

  19. Harry U. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Harry U., who was born in approximately 1909, to an Orthodox family of nine children. He recalls living in Zakopane; draft into the Polish military in 1928; recall in August 1939; German invasion; retreating to Przasnysz; returning home briefly; fleeing to Soviet-occupied L?viv via Cieszano?w, then to Pidhai?t?s?i; Soviet deportation by train to Sverdlovsk (Ekaterinburg), then a forced labor camp; release due to his Polish citizenship; learning of a Polish exile army organizing in Kazakhstan; traveling with other Poles to Alma-Ata, Samarqand, Tashkent and Bukhoro to e...

  20. Susan B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Susan B., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1929. She recounts being raised as a Catholic (her mother was Lutheran and her father Jewish); performing at the Vienna State Theater; the Anschluss; her father's harassment by a Hitler Youth; his incarceration in Dachau; obtaining British visas with assistance from her half-sister; traveling with her mother to London in November 1938; living in a foster home with a Jewish girl from Breslau; her mother working as a domestic; a wonderful relationship with her foster mother and sister; her father's arrival; visits from her pa...