Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 61 to 80 of 116
Language of Description: German
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Charles P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Charles P., who was born in Olkusz, Poland in 1923. He relates his family's emigration to Palestine, then France in 1926; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; a printer's apprenticeship; German invasion; a futile attempt to join the Resistance in Poitiers; printing Resistance papers in his father's Paris print shop; fleeing to Lyon in 1943; acquiring false papers in Montluel; arrest by the Gestapo; declaring himself a Jew to avoid more torture in Montluc; transfer to Drancy; deportation to Birkenau; slave labor in coal mines in Jawischowitz; relations between prisoners ...

  2. Paul H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paul H., who was born in Bielsko-Bia?a, Poland in 1925. Mr. H. recalls German invasion; his family's flight to Krako?w; avoiding round-ups; traveling to Bielsko for business; arrest and imprisonment; Gestapo torture; release after two months when his sister bribed a guard; returning to Krako?w; escaping, with his brother, to the Soviet zone; visiting his family in Krako?w; remaining when the borders were closed; ghettoization in Tarno?w; execution of his parents and younger sister; deportation to P?aszo?w in 1943; separation from his other sister when he was deported ...

  3. Ladislav Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ladislav Z., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1919, one of three children. He recounts living in Trnava; moving to Bratislava in 1926; his parents' assimilated lifestyle; he and his sister attending high school; active participation in a small communist group; attending medical school in 1937; Hlinka guard expelling Jewish students in 1938; working in forestry, then as a journalist for an illegal communist magazine; enrolling in law school; expulsion in 1941; draft into a forced labor group; postings in Čemerné, Liptovský Hrádok, then Svätý Jur; obtaining fa...

  4. Samuel W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Samuel W., who was born in Krako?w, Poland in 1913. He recalls attending a Polish school; cordial relations with non-Jews; picketing of Jewish stores; German invasion; being arrested with Poles and Jews in early September 1939; detention at Gestapo headquarters, then Montelupich prison; release of the non-Jewish prisoners; transfer to Troppau; encountering Gustaw Morcinek, a prominent Polish writer; transfer to Sachsenhausen some two years later; separation of Jews; a sadistic barrack commander; loss of toes due to severe cold; relations between prisoner groups; slave...

  5. Henri E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henri E., who was born in Paris, France in 1916, one of five children. He recalls participating in organized sports; military service in 1937 in Metz; assignment to the Maginot Line in August 1939; retreating during the German invasion in 1940; being wounded; evacuation to Vichy; nineteen months hospitalization; activities for the Resistance while on furloughs from the hospital; meeting his sister in Clermont-Ferrand; participating in bombing Vichy government and Gestapo offices; his sister's arrest, then his on September 13, 1942; imprisonment in several places; a fa...

  6. Henri M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Henri M., a non-Jew, who was born in Saverne, France in 1920. He recalls attending school with Jews; his family's strong French patriotism; learning German in Berlin; studying in Strasbourg and Nancy; German invasion; military draft in June 1940; capture; escape from a POW center; traveling to Paris and Dijon; living in Saverne; studying in Heidelberg; arrest and escape; returning clandestinely to France with the help of French and Austrian Resistance members; studying law in Clermont-Ferrand; anti-Petain sentiments among students; Resistance work in the unoccupied zo...

  7. Herman L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Herman L., who was born in Thessalonike?, Greece in 1926. He recounts his family's long history in Salonika; Jewish life; German invasion in 1941; anti-Jewish restrictions; fleeing with his friends to Drama; their arrest attempting to cross the Turkish border; frequent torture during six months in a Gestapo jail in Belgrade; transfer by train to a Greek jail in Thessalonike? in March 1943; assistance from a Greek friend; deportation to Birkenau in August 1943; his assigned job carrying corpses; transfer to Warsaw after the ghetto revolt in August 1943; mass killings d...

  8. Fred O. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Fred O., who was born in Hrubieszo?w, Poland in 1909. He describes his family life; growing up in an anti-Semitic environment; medical school in Montpellier, France and the pleasure of being away from the atmosphere in Poland; being compelled to repeat his medical education in Warsaw; and the stress involved with the return to Poland. He recalls the German invasion; working as a doctor in the Warsaw ghetto; the pervasive lice and resulting typhus epidemic; extreme hunger; returning to Hrubieszo?w; treating a Gestapo agent, then watching him shoot children and old peop...

  9. Edith G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Edith G., who was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1905 and adopted. She recalls living in Copenhagen; returning to Germany; her close family; marriage in 1928; and the births of her children. She describes her husband's arrest in 1935; his twenty-month incarceration; their move to Holland; German bombing of Rotterdam; moving to Zeist; not having to wear the yellow star, though her husband and children had to, because a Dutch policeman did not classify her as a Jew due to lack of information about her biological parents; arranging several hiding places for her children thr...

  10. Morris R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Morris R. who was born in Cze?stochowa, Poland in 1922 and grew up in Da?browa Go?rnicza. He recalls traditional family life; attending public school and cheder; Jewish scout activities; German invasion; attempting to reach Warsaw with his older brother; returning home upon learning that the Germans were everywhere; anti-Jewish restrictions; imposition of forced labor on the Jewish community through a Judenrat; his sister's deportation to Gru?nberg; ghettoization in 1942; and his family's deportation in August. Mr. R. recounts receiving food from a Gestapo chief for r...

  11. Philip B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Philip B., who was born in Izbica, near Lublin, Poland, in 1925. He describes his prewar family life; the wartime transfer of German and Czech Jews to Izbica, a railroad center; and a typhus epidemic there. He recounts the beginning of deportations to Be?z?ec, a nearby extermination camp, in 1941; his family's life in hiding; and the deportations of his father and other family members. Mr. B. relates his own capture by Polish police and his transfer to Gestapo headquarters; his feigned death in front of a firing squad; hiding with siblings and his mother; and his moth...

  12. Carol W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Carol W., who was born in Stanis?awo?w, Poland (now Ivano-Frankovsk, Ukraine), in 1915. Mrs. W. relates her marriage; the birth of her son Clemens L. in 1937; Soviet, then German occupation; the shooting of some 10,000 Jews in an Aktion; ghettoization; believing her family safe because her father was in the Judenrat; hiding with other relatives during a September 1942 Aktion when her husband and father were taken; and escaping on false papers with her son, brother, and niece. She tells of taking her son to Lwo?w; a narrow escape en route; securing a job and sending fo...

  13. Kurt S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Kurt S., who was born in Krefeld, Germany in 1924. He recalls being barred from university in 1938 due to anti-Jewish restrictions; working on a Jewish training farm in Silesia; Gestapo dissolution of the farm in 1941; returning to Krefeld; and transport with his parents to the Ri?ga ghetto in December. Mr. S. describes unloading ships; refusing a ship captain's offer to smuggle him to Denmark in order to remain with his parents; work details in Ri?ga, Salaspils, Kaiserwald and other places; frequent deaths from starvation, hangings, and shootings; narrowly escaping e...

  14. Claire S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Claire S., who was born in Germany, the oldest of four children of Polish émigrés. She recounts her family's move to Brussels; attending school; working at fourteen to help support her family; joining the Bund; her father's arrest for debt resulting in his deportation to Germany; obtaining money to secure his return; German invasion; one brother hiding in a monastery; anti-Jewish restrictions; marriage in 1942; obtaining false papers; her sister's deportation; bribing officials to free an underground member from the Gestapo; her father's round-up and deportation; ar...

  15. Roger P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape of Roger P., who was born in 1922. He recalls implementation of anti-Jewish measures in France; incarceration in Pithiviers; hiding in Brunoy after his release; obtaining false papers; fleeing to Nice, then Grenoble; working in Vif; his arrest in Uriage in 1942; escaping; hiding with his father; unsuccessful attempts to emigrate; returning to Grenoble; living under false papers in Nice; arrest and interrogation by the Gestapo in 1943; refusing to identify Jews in hiding; transfer to Drancy; deportation to Auschwitz in October; assignment to the night shift in the Janina mines; bea...

  16. Walter S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Walter S., who was born in Steinbach, Germany in 1924. He recalls living in Mannheim from 1931 on; his strong sense of German identity; expulsion from school; attending Jewish school; Kristallnacht; learning his father was in Dachau; moving to a kibbutz near Berlin hoping to emigrate to Palestine; and Gestapo takeover of the kibbutz. Mr. S. describes extreme hunger while harvesting crops for the Germans; transfer to several camps; observing the bombing of Berlin; transport to Auschwitz; selection for work in Buna; being shaved and tattooed (#117,022); illness; transfe...

  17. 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...

  18. Magdalena N. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Magdalena N., who was born in Ružomberok, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1920, one of two sisters. She recalls cordial relations with non-Jews; her strong Slovak identity; teaching Jewish students in L̕ubochňa; anti-Jewish restrictions, including the humiliation of having to wear the star; moving to Bratislava with her family; her father hiding them, then arranging for her and her sister to be smuggled to Hungary; interdiction in Senec; return to Bratislava; two strangers paying for their release; her sister's marriage to a man legally exempted from deportat...

  19. Celina F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Celina F., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1925, one of nine children. She recalls pervasive antisemitism; German invasion; the bombing of their home; beatings of Jews including her brother; moving to Koprzywnica with her mother; returning to Warsaw to rejoin their family; ghettoization; round-ups; deaths from starvation; deciding to escape despite not wanting to leave her family; traveling to Koprzywnica, then to Sandomierz; staying with a Jewish family; escaping during a round-up; hiding with a Polish family; returning to the Warsaw ghetto; learning her family had...

  20. Harry M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Harry M., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1920. He recounts his United States citizenship through his father; participation in Jewish athletics; pervasive antisemisitm; German occupation in March 1938; giving a Gestapo official their expired passport to ensure they could leave; leaving with his parents for Paris the same day; traveling to the United States three weeks later; arranging for relatives and his fiancee to join them; military conscription in 1943; infantry service in Europe; assignment as an interpreter in April 1945; choosing not to shoot German POWs wh...