Archival Descriptions

Advanced query tips

There are several ways to be more specific in your search query:

"Phrase"
Search an exact match of your query, e.g. "Member lists"
+Phrase
Given word has to be in the result, e.g. +Gestapo
-Phrase
Exclude given word from search, e.g. -Gestapo

Use the following syntax to restrict the search to specific fields:

field:"phrase"
For instance, you can find all descriptions that have the phrase "Auschwitz Birkenau" in their titles by searching for title:"Auschwitz Birkenau".

The following fields are currently available:

  • identifier
  • title
  • creator
  • person
  • place
  • subject
  • address
Displaying items 41 to 60 of 116
Search result ordering
Language of Description: German
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Rabbi Abraham K. Holocaust testimony

    Video testimony of Rabbi Abraham K., who was born in Katowice, Poland in 1918. Rabbi K. describes his family; moving to Sosnowiec in 1942; formation of the ghetto; and deportation to Auschwitz with his fiancee's family. He relates conditions in Birkenau; interaction with other prisoners; being sick with typhus; selections; and being chosen for a special detail. Rabbi K. recalls transfer to Sachsenhausen, where forged English currency was inspected and sorted for a variety of uses by the German government. Rabbi K. recounts incidents of religious observance; working on a Gestapo archive whic...

  2. Joseph and Dorothy B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Joseph B., who was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1927. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; his father teaching in a Jewish school; attending a Jewish boys' school; participation in Maccabi; his father's trip to Palestine and return, thinking he could not make a living there; antisemitic harassment; being warned prior to Kristallnacht; his father leaving (he went to the synagogue to rescue a Torah); Gestapo coming to arrest his father; his father's return days later (they attribute his survival to the Torah); difficulties trying to emigrate; receiving exit visas outside o...

  3. Peter B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Peter B., a Russian Orthodox, who was born in Terijoki, Finland (now Zelenogorsk, R.S.F.S.R.) in 1916. He relates his family's move to Russia after the 1917 Revolution; living in Poland approximately two years; joining his father in Paris in 1925; earning a degree in chemical engineering; volunteering at war's outbreak; attending officers' school; being wounded and captured by the Germans in June 1940; and escaping in July. He recalls being demobilized; working for the Germans to avoid capture; marriage; assisting in resistance activities through his wife and brother-...

  4. Serge B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Serge B., who was born in France in 1921. He recalls his parents were Russian immigrants; their assimilated, secular life in Paris; not feeling Jewish until German invasion; his father's escape from the July 1942 round-up with help from a police friend; being sent with his siblings to live with their uncle in Cannes; joining the Resistance; becoming head of his group; arrest in 1943; violent interrogations; the Gestapo discovering he was Jewish; transfer to a prison in Nice, then Drancy; digging an escape tunnel with fourteen prisoners; discovery of the tunnel; confin...

  5. Julia P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Julia P., who was born in Kon?skowola, Poland in 1908. She recalls the impoverished shtetl; her mother's death; her father's remarriage; the family's move to Warsaw; factory work at age fourteen; and moving to Belgium in 1934 because she saw no future in Poland. She relates marriage to a Belgian; attending photography and journalism school; receiving a Leica camera with which she took all her pictures and still uses; German invasion; fleeing to France; work in an airplane factory in Marseille; being treated as a German spy several times because she was taking pictures...

  6. Walter S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Walter S., who was born in Steinbach, Germany in 1924. This testimony includes all of the information in an earlier interview (HVT-146). Additional topics discussed include his father's release from Dachau; his sister's emigration to the United States under Quaker auspices in 1941; his parents' deportation to France; being beaten by the Gestapo (he could not speak of this for years); and being forced to submit to homosexual advances by veteran prisoners in a concentration camp. He recounts returning to Steinbach after liberation; meeting his wife in a displaced person...

  7. Ela L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ela L. who was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in approximately 1924. She recounts German invasion; wearing the yellow armband and forced labor clearing rubble; Germans killing 100 Jews as retribution, including her grandfather; non-Jewish friends hiding her father; obtaining false papers; traveling by train with her parents and sister to the Toplice region in November 1941; living in Kurs?umlija; assistance from non-Jews; leaving in 1942 when Germans were approaching; living in a village with a Serb for more than a year; leaving when warned the Gestapo knew of them; fle...

  8. Beba L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Beba L., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1925. She recounts her grandfather's partnership in Rom Publishing; attending private school; Soviet occupation; German invasion in June 1941; anti-Jewish restrictions; round-ups of people who never returned; ghettoization in September; being hidden with a non-Jewish family for three months; their priest's efforts to convert her (she did not care, if it led to her survival); visiting the ghetto, not intending to stay; finding her immediate family of seven gone; living with an aunt; receiving food from her former non-Jewish mai...

  9. Anna G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anna G., who was born in Drohobych, Ukraine (then Poland), in 1929. She speaks of her prewar life, life under Russian occupation, and her experience of the German occupation of her town. She notes the worsening conditions under German occupation, culminating in the deportations and (as they learned only later) mass murder of Jews, including Mrs. G.'s mother, sister, and young niece. She tells of living with her father and brother in Drohobych; in the Gestapo camp on Janowska Street, where she had to hide in a closet for over a year and was finally discovered by a Germ...

  10. Ellen P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ellen P., a non-Jew who was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1925 and who was involved in the Danish Resistance during the war. She describes the German occupation of Denmark in 1940; her involvement in underground politics in high school soon after the occupation; planning for increasingly active means of resistance; and the activities of the Resistance in warning and hiding Jews, as well as smuggling them by boat to Sweden. She speaks of collaboration with the Swedes for the rescue of Jews, including methods of sabotage and blackmail; her brothers' involvement in resc...

  11. Rosel B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rosel B., who was born in 1916 in Warsaw, Poland. Mrs. B. describes her family's move to Berlin; visits to her grandparents in Poland; attending a Jewish school; their highly cultured lifestyle; warnings about Hitler from 1928 onward; attending secretarial school; forced sale of the family business; her engagement in 1936; marriage in Berlin; emigration to Amsterdam; and the birth of her daughter. She recounts German invasion; betrayal by their housekeeper; receiving a notice for deportation; fleeing with her husband and daughter, via Brussels and Bordeaux, to Nice; b...

  12. Aharon C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Aharon C., who was born in Opoczno, Poland in 1921, one of seven children. He recounts attending cheder, public school, then Tarbut school; participating in Gordonyah; antisemitic violence; his older brother's emigration to Palestine in 1935; two brothers' conscription; German invasion; one brother's return; anti-Jewish restrictions; Germans taking community leaders for ransom, including his father; the community paying the ransom; his father's appointment to the Judenrat; ghettoization; working in the family bakery; volunteering in a soup kitchen; his assignment to b...

  13. Robert R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Robert R., who was born in Mellrichstadt, Germany in 1924. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; attending a Catholic school; antisemitic harassment; attending high school with his brother in Bad Neustadt an der Saale; increasing antisemitism; expulsion from school in 1937; attending a Jewish school; having to leave town for defending himself against an attack by Hitler Youth; being beaten by Nazis; apprenticeship with an uncle as a tailor; Kristallnacht; his father's and uncle's arrests; his arrest and deportation to Buchenwald; a fellow prisoner assisting him; standin...

  14. Jadwiga G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jadwiga G., who was born in Lublin, Poland in 1923, one of three children. Ms. G. recalls her family's affluence; attending Polish school; cordial relations with non-Jews; German invasion; ghettoization; moving to Melgiew in summer 1941; her future husband joining them; visiting friends and relatives in the Lublin ghetto; obtaining authentic documents as non-Jews; round-ups of Jews from nearby villages in October 1942; returning to Lublin; her father leaving en route when he was robbed and lost hope (she never saw him again); his non-Jewish, former employer arranging ...

  15. Rachel S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rachel S., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1923, one of five children. She recalls cordial relations with non-Jews; German invasion in 1941; ghettoization; sneaking back to her former neighborhood and receiving food from non-Jewish neighbors; forced labor; her father losing his will to live; his refusal of an offer from a non-Jewish friend to hide their family; remaining in their apartment with one sister during a round-up (another sister and her parents were shot in a mass killing at Ponary); joining her brother who was hiding in a village; discovery; incarceration ...

  16. Ann R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ann R., who was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1929. She recalls early happy memories; German bombardment; wearing the yellow star; expulsion from school; watching the Gestapo round-up her parents; and their wanton destruction, including the "evisceration" of a doll. She remembers informing the sanitarium where her brother was hospitalized that her parents had been taken away (they would not keep him anymore since there was no one to pay); giving him to a strange woman; wandering the streets with her sister; a nun offering to help them; moving many times; a visit from h...

  17. Nadine H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Nadine H., who was born in France in 1928. She relates living in Strasbourg; moving to Eure-et-loir with her mother when the war began; joining her father in Nancy in 1940; German invasion; fleeing with her mother to a village near Pau, then Vichy; living in Cusset from 1940 to 1941; moving to Valence, then Lyon in October 1941; arrest with her parents on May 13, 1944; Gestapo interrogations; incarceration in Montluc prison; transfer to Drancy; her parents meeting with Commander Brunner; and deportation to Auschwitz in May 1944. Dr. H. recounts her father's last words...

  18. Fanny G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Fanny G., who was born in Paris, France in 1921 to Polish immigrants. She recalls her three brothers; moving with her family to Cantal in 1940, then to Lyon; resistance activities with the MUR; visiting her parents and brothers who were hiding in Savoie; arrest in June 1944; imprisonment in Montluçon; Gestapo torture and beatings; friendships with prisoners that endure to the present; transfer to Drancy; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in August; frequent appels and selections; transfer with friends to Krautau; slave labor in an airplane factory; sabotaging the par...

  19. Jacques A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jacques A., who was born in Germany in 1923. He recounts his mother's family's long history in Germany; their flight from Wuppertal to Nancy in 1933 due to antisemitism; moving to Romainville in 1936; arrest in 1941 for beating a Nazi sympathizer; escaping to Nantes; obtaining false papers; learning of his family's arrest in October 1942; his arrest in Nantes in 1943 as a Resistant; Gestapo interrogations; transfer to Drancy; deportation to Auschwitz; slave labor in "Lagischa Gruben" (Lagisza Cmentarna); transfer to Birkenau in July 1944; contracting typhus; friends p...

  20. Gitta W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gitta W., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1934. She notes vague memories of being loved and hearing marching in the Berlin streets; traveling to Belgium; living in a house with her parents and relatives; German invasion; fleeing to Paris, then Nice; her malaise at seeing her parents very upset; difficulties in school; her father and uncle escaping when the families were arrested; release with her cousin; hiding with her father, uncle, and cousin; escaping after detection by the Gestapo; hiding with other Jews in a small village and Marseille; placement in a convent...