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Displaying items 121 to 140 of 816
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Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Alfred F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alfred F., who was born in Breslau, Germany (presently Wrocław, Poland) in 1920, the older of two siblings. He recounts his father's pro-German sentiments based on his military service in World War I; anti-Jewish laws resulting in his expulsion from school in 1934; attending a Jewish school; moving with his family to Berlin in 1935; participating in Hechalutz; attending their summer camp; hearing Martin Buber speak; non-Jewish neighbors hiding his family during Kristallnacht; his sister's emigration to England, then his to Wieringen, Netherlands with a hachsharah in M...

  2. 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...

  3. Rivka K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rivka K., who was born in Rzeszów, Poland, in 1920, one of two children. She recounts her family's Zionism; attending Hebrew schools; participating in Zionist youth groups; her family's move to Kraków in 1933; attending a Hebrew gymnasium; participating in Ha-No'ar ha-Ivri-Akiba led by Yoel Dreiblatt; antisemitic harassment; working for Akiba in Warsaw; being sent to establish Akiba in Bydgoszcz, Skarżysko, and Starachowice; assisting German-Jewish refugees in Zbąszyń; returning to Kraków as a leader with Shimon Draenger, Adolf Liebeskind (Dolek) and others; eng...

  4. Jacob G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jacob G., who was born in Siedlce, Poland in 1914. He recounts his mother's death when he was five; his father's remarriage; an unpleasant childhood; moving with his family to Warsaw in 1921; working in his father's sign painting business; increasing antisemitism in the 1930s; German invasion; fleeing six weeks later to Bia?ystok in the Soviet zone; deportation to Siberia; forced labor; being allowed to leave after Germany invaded the Soviet Union; traveling to Uzbekistan; working in a produce business; learning in 1944 there were virtually no Jews left alive in Polan...

  5. Rosie L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rosie L., who was born in Poland in 1933. She recalls growing up in Brussels; their secularism; antisemitic harassment; German invasion; their flight to Lille, then a town in the Pyrenees; her father's military draft; France's surrender; her father's demobilization; returning to Brussels in August 1940 via Toulouse and Paris; antisemitic regulations; her sister's conscription for labor; being hidden with her brother on a farm; her mother retrieving them; seeing Germans near her house and assuming her parents had been taken; being sent to a Resistance member; his inabi...

  6. Susanne P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Suzanne P., who was born in Oppeln, Germany (presently Opole, Poland). She recalls street fights between Nazis and communists; being shunned by former non-Jewish friends; attending a Jewish boarding school in Breslau; mass destruction on Kristallnacht; returning home; destruction of her father's business; their non-Jewish landlord protecting their home; emigrating to Stockholm with her younger sister, hoping their parents could follow; living in several foster homes (her sister remained with one elderly woman); receiving letters from their parents prior to 1943; worki...

  7. Rudolf K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rudolf K., who was born in Poland in 1900. He describes his family's move to Leipzig, Germany in 1905; being forced to move during World War I as "enemy aliens"; a later move to Dresden; and starting his business, marriage and the birth of his daughter in Paris. He recalls returning to Germany in 1925 at the request of his parents; founding a successful business; police harassment; escaping to Poland; and helping his family leave Germany with the aid of a friend in the Nazi Party. He tells of liquidating his business in Poland because he was accused of tax evasion; tr...

  8. 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...

  9. 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...

  10. Manfred M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotaped testimony of Manfred M., who was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1917, one of seven children. He recalls cordial relations with non-Jews until 1933; working for the Warburg banking firm; an announcement in 1937 that the bank would become a German firm; Mr. Warburg leaving in tears; several of his own siblings leaving Germany; realizing he had to leave; asking Mr. Warburg for assistance; receiving papers to emigrate to the United States through Mr. Warburg's son; scheduling his emigration for November 11, 1938; Kristallnacht taking place on November 10; arrest shortly thereafter; inca...

  11. Alfred F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alfred F., who was born in Cologne, Germany in 1927. He recalls emigration with his mother and brother to Holland in 1933; his father joining them; attending school in Zaandam; German invasion; difficulty dealing with anti-Jewish restrictions; deportation with his family to Westerbork; separation from his mother; living with his father and brother in a barrack; working as a messenger, and learning news from recent arrivals; attempts not to be "on the lists" for deportation; deportation with his mother, father, and brother to Bergen-Belsen in 1944; advantages due to th...

  12. Gerda and Samuel A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gerda and Samuel A. Gerda A. was born in Vienna, Austria in 1928. She recalls expulsion from school; antisemitic harassment; her father's decision that the family emigrate to Shanghai, against her mother's wishes; their arrival in October 1938; her father establishing a business; deterioration of conditions after Pearl Harbor; ghettoization in Hongkew; transfer to the Kadoorie school; positive contacts with Horace Kadoorie; rampant diseases resulting from lack of sanitation and hunger; the Jews establishing a theater, hospital, and athletic teams; difficult relations ...

  13. Trudy T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Trudy T., who was born in Heilbronn, Germany in 1924. She recalls her family's assimilated life; attending public school; anti-Jewish regulations, including the expulsion of Jews from schools; attending a Jewish school; her older sister's emigration to Palestine in 1938; her own emigration on a HIAS children's transport to the United States in October 1938; living with a foster family in St. Louis; fear for her family in Germany when Kristallnacht occurred; learning of her brother's emigration to England on a children's transport; the importance of the emotional suppo...

  14. Abraham K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Abraham K., who was born in Goworowo, Poland in 1933. He recalls German invasion; fires and shooting; his father arranging for them (his sister, mother, aunt, uncle, two cousins and three grandparents) to flee to Soviet-occupied Bia?ystok; deportation to Siberia by the Soviets; his mother's death (his grandparents and one cousin also eventually died); placement in an orphanage with his sister; his uncle and father serving in the military; separation from his sister for two years; retrieval by his uncle after the war; being smuggled to Germany; and emigration to the Un...

  15. Alice G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alice G., who was born in Pres?ov, Czechoslovakia, in 1924. Mrs. G. describes her youthful patriotism; her happy childhood; resistance of her teachers and parents to her desire for education; her frustrated and insecure mother; being her father's favorite child and his contribution to her "loving and non-ambivalent" religious outlook; and falling in love while in summer camp in 1938. She recalls her mother's decision, following Munich, to emigrate to the United States; antisemitic acts of the Slovaks; the family's purchase of U.S. visas; their train journey via Berlin...

  16. Edith T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Edith T., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1927, the older of two sisters. She recounts her middle class, assimilated family; attending public school; increasing antisemitism; Austrians welcoming the Germans during the Anschluss; anti-Jewish restrictions and harassment; expulsion from school; her father's friend, who had joined the Nazi party, warning them to leave; traveling with her parents and sister to Aachen; her parents obtaining false papers for her and her sister, then leaving them on a train to enter Belgium; her parents joining them at a farmhouse, having ...

  17. Leo M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leo M., who was born in Grodzisk, Poland in 1911. He recounts pervasive antisemitism; apprenticing to a tailor at age thirteen; marriage in 1937; emigrating to Paris; his son's birth in 1938; volunteering for French military service in September 1939; German invasion; action at Alsace and Verdun; being wounded; hospitalization in Perpignan; returning to Paris; internment in spring 1941 as a non-citizen Jew; visits from his wife and son; release in fall 1942; hiding with his wife and son, with assistance from a French family, during the round-up in July 1942; the Frenc...

  18. Justin R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Justin R., who was born in 1929 in Horstein, Germany, the older of two brothers. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; their affluence; attending a Jewish school; a neighbor shooting their dog when the Nazis came to power; vandalism against Jewish property and beatings of Jews; confiscation of his father's store; his father's beating by a man he knew, resulting in his decision to emigrate; he and his brother being sent to a Jewish boarding school; threats by SS to shoot all the children in the school on Kristallnacht; his parents retrieving him and his brother; living i...

  19. Raymond W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Raymond W., a non-Jew, who was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1923. He recounts participating in a Communist youth group; his family housing refugees from Germany; disrupting Rexist meetings; German invasion; being wounded in an air raid in Boulogne en route to enlist; hanging anti-German posters in the streets; returning to Brussels; joining the resistance; helping to sabotage production and organize strikes; hiding belongings of Jewish deportees to prevent appropriation by Germans; warning Jews to go into hiding; his mother compelling him to volunteer to work in Germa...

  20. Ilse W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ilse W., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1915. She recounts her father's service in World War I; her parents' prosperous businesses; celebrating Jewish holidays with her large and close extended family; destruction of their synagogue on Kristallnacht; arrest and immediate release; her brother's emigration to Palestine and her sister's to England in 1939; obtaining visas for Shanghai; traveling to Genoa to board a ship; being prevented from leaving by the outbreak of war; marriage; internment with her mother in San Fele and Potenza (men were interned elsewhere); her...