Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 21 to 40 of 816
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Evelyn R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Evelyn R., who was born in Breslau, Germany in 1930. She recounts her maternal family's distinguished rabbinical ancestry; her father's service in World War I; her mother's successful business; her father's reluctance to leave Germany after Hitler's election in 1933, believing his status as a veteran protected them; loss of the business and expulsion from school following the Nuremberg laws; attending a Jewish school; selling family valuables; destruction during Kristallnacht; her father's incarceration in Buchenwald; her mother purchasing tickets to Shanghai; her fat...

  2. 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...

  3. Klara S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Klara S., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1927. She recounts attending a Jewish school; her father's medical practice; bombing of their building during German invasion marking the end of her childhood; illegally entering Soviet-occupied territory with her mother in November; living with relatives in Białystok; her father joining them in spring 1940; arrest by Soviets while illegally attempting to enter Lithuania; brief imprisonment with her mother in Lida; her father's imprisonment in Baranovichi; returning to Białystok in May; living in Slonim; attending a Soviet s...

  4. Beatrice R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Beatrice R., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1928. She recalls her affluent home; the Anschluss; her father's deportation to Dachau, then Buchenwald, in 1938; sending him packages; her mother liquidating their assets; purchasing her father's passage to Shanghai to obtain his release; his emigration to Shanghai (her mother followed); her mother placing her on a children's transport to Paris; pleasant conditions in a castle; German invasion; transfer to another home; receiving false papers; transfer to a girls' religious home; deportations; her breakdown after many c...

  5. Dorothea A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Dorothea A., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1921. She recounts her parents had emigrated from Poland; her father's service for Austria in World War I; two significantly older brothers; her father's forced return to Poland for much of her childhood, due to citizenship issues; studying piano privately, then in conservatory; the Anschluss; expulsion from conservatory due to anti-Jewish laws; confiscation of the family business; one brother's flight to England; her father's hospitalization and death in October 1938; protection by the building superintendent on Kristal...

  6. Marianne S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Marianne S., who was born in Mannheim, Germany in 1933 and raised in Steinsfurt, where all the Jews were her relatives. She recalls her uncle's emigration to St. Louis in 1936; her father's reluctance to leave; the wanton destruction of their home on Kristallnacht; her father's arrest and imprisonment in Dachau; the remaining Jews moving into her family's house for safety; receiving food from a non-Jewish tradesman; her father's release from Dachau; harassment by officials as they traveled through Germany in 1940 to leave for the United States; Italian soldiers harass...

  7. Stephen F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Stephen F., who was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1912. He recounts his father's leaving for military service in 1914; his return four years later and death shortly thereafter; turmoil during the Nazi takeover in 1933; attending medical school; being warned to leave prior to a raid (his older sister and brother had already emigrated); an unsuccessful attempt to attend medical school in Strasbourg; studying in Amsterdam; joining his brother and sister in the United States; graduating from Harvard Medical School; getting his mother and grandparents out in 1938; ...

  8. Louis H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Louis H., who was born in Flehingen, Germany in 1918. He recalls his family's all-embracing Jewish life prior to Hitler; expulsion from school in 1933 due to anti-Jewish laws; his father's death in 1936; emigrating to Antwerp in 1936, then to the United States in March 1937 to join his sister; bringing his brother and mother to the States; enlistment in the U.S. Army in 1942; serving in France, Holland, and Belgium; participating in the Battle of the Bulge; concerns about being mistaken for a German due to his accent; combat in Germany; entering Nordhausen; shock at t...

  9. Paul H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paul H., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1911. He recalls vague memories of World War I; his father's successful lumber business; his father's death in 1929; attending Cambridge University from 1930 to 1934; visiting Palestine in 1932; his mother's emigration to France in 1934; establishing a lumber business with his brother in 1936; marriage; his brother's emigration to London in 1938; awareness of the danger for Jews due to business trips to Germany; German invasion in September 1939; escaping to Lublin with his wife and her family; assistance from Polish officers...

  10. Gilda Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gilda Z., who was born in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland in approximately 1916. She recounts her mother's death when she was a baby; her father's remarriage; moving to Ciechocinek; joyous holiday celebrations; living briefly with relatives in Łódź; German invasion; fleeing with her brother to Soviet territory; seeing her future husband in Brest; exile to a work camp in the Archangelʹskai︠a︡ region of Siberia; imprisonment after a failed escape attempt; traveling with her brother to Tashkent; encountering her future husband again; forced labor; marriage; her son's bir...

  11. Lilly T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lilly T., who was born in Szikszo?, Hungary in 1930. Mrs. T. details her family history; their comfortable and assimilated lifestyle; arrival of Jewish refugees from 1938 onward; anti-Jewish regulations; her older brother's resistance efforts; and deportation with her family to Kos?ice, then Auschwitz. She recounts immediate separation from her family; transfer to Birkenau; her sense that she grew up immediately; inclusion with a group of children; escape from that group with the assistance of a Wehrmacht soldier; transport to Estonia; slave labor cutting wood; receiv...

  12. Martha S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Martha S., who was born in Prague in 1907. Mrs. S. describes her early family life; her family's move to the Sudeten in 1909; and her family's reaction to her marrying a non-Jewish child survivor of the Armenian genocide. She recounts the plight of the Jews in the wake of Kristallnacht and her husband's help in assisting her and her parents to flee to Czechoslovakia. She recalls anti-Jewish restrictions; her designation, along with her oldest "Jewish" daughter, for transport to a labor camp (a younger daughter was not designated as Jewish); and her husband's conscript...

  13. Martin R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Martin R., who was born in Posen, Germany (presently Poznan?, Poland) in 1908. He describes his father's death as a Prussian officer in World War I; his mother's strong German identification; moving to Berlin with his family in 1918; attending school in Bu?tow; antisemitic incidents; joining a family lumber business in Danzig in 1936; moving to Warsaw in 1938; German invasion; traveling to many places to avoid German capture; arriving in Amsterdam in November 1939; German invasion; escaping by boat; incarceration as an enemy alien in many places, including St. John's,...

  14. Gisela W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gisela W., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1925. She recalls her family's wealthy, assimilated life; antisemitic vandalism; attending a private girls' school; expulsion as a Jew; attending the American school; living with an uncle in the Hague (her brother had been sent to England); visiting family in Stuttgart; living with an aunt in Switzerland; staying in a hotel in Lugano; moving with her parents to Amsterdam in April 1939; attending Dutch school; German invasion; obtaining permission to leave through her uncle, who headed the Warburg Bank in Holland; leaving w...

  15. Boris G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Boris G., who was born in Skalat, Poland in 1922, one of three brothers. He recounts his mother's death when he was six; living in an orphanage; working for an aunt; Soviet occupation; German invasion in 1941; one brother being killed; fleeing to Kharkiv, then Krasnodar; working on a collective farm; draft into the Soviet army in Rostov; postings in Stalingrad and Beketovka; participating in the battle of Stalingrad; an acquaintanceship with Nikita Khrushchev; commanding several hundred soldiers; interrogating captured Germans; liberating Auschwitz; entering the cathe...

  16. Helen R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Helen R., who was born in Rozwadów, Poland in 1930, the youngest of three children. She recalls living with a loving, extended family; attending Polish and Jewish schools; German invasion; expulsion of all the Jews across the San River to Soviet territory; living with relatives in Z︠H︡ovkva for nine months; deportation with her immediate and extended family to Siberia; briefly living in a barrack, then with a family; her father organizing her brother's clandestine bar mitzvah; transfer to another barrack; one aunt's death; forced labor; meager rations; receiving Pass...

  17. Mark W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mark W., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1917, one of three children. He recounts his family's emigration to Palestine in 1924; their return to ?o?dz? in 1927; his father's successful textile business; studying textile engineering in Verviers beginning in 1935; assisting German anti-Nazis; becoming engaged during a visit home; Germany invasion of Poland; moving to Brussels; his father fleeing to Trieste with assistance from a German associate who was a Nazi; German invasion in 1940; fleeing to Dunkerque, then Paris; being sent to a Polish army camp in central France...

  18. Walter S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Walter S., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1923. He recalls his family's affluence; their immersion in cultural activities; increasing Nazi influence leading to his expulsion from Boy Scouts; joining a Zionist youth group which provided positive experiences; the Anschluss; he and his mother visiting every embassy, hoping to emigrate; his sister moving to England in fall 1938; being stripped of all rights by the Nuremberg laws; hiding in his maternal grandmother's villa during Kristallnacht; his arrest in a round-up; his father obtaining his release through the Nazi...

  19. Maurice S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Maurice S., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1915. He recalls joining a Zionist organization in spite of his family's Hasidic roots; antisemitic harassment; attending a private Hebrew school; emigration with his family to Antwerp, Belgium in 1929; joining his father's business; fleeing toward France during the German invasion; returning; moving to Brussels in late 1941 or early 1942 after receiving German orders to report for work; obtaining false papers; placing his parents in hiding with an Italian woman; removing them after Germans came and the woman protected the...

  20. Leon S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leon S., who was born in Germany in 1905. He describes moving to Cze?stochowa, Poland in 1910; involvement with a Zionist youth movement; living in Palestine from 1923-1926; returning to Cze?stochowa at his father's request; marriage and the birth of two sons; and his prosperous business. He recounts increasingly restrictive legislation against the Jews by the Germans; escaping round-ups in the ghetto; cooperating with the Germans to save Jews; activities in the underground; escaping deportation to Radom because he was considered valuable by the Germans; constant effo...