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Displaying items 81 to 100 of 116
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Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Helga P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Helga P., who was born in Charlottenburg, Germany in January 1939, the illegitimate child of a Jewish father, whom she never knew, and a half-Jewish mother. She recounts staying in a children's home in Eberswalde until the war began in September; living with her mother, uncle, and grandparents in Berlin; living briefly with her mother in Zedlitz; her Jewish grandmother hiding during Gestapo raids; her Protestant grandfather's efforts to save them; living in Brieselang; liberation by Soviet troops; resuming school; returning to Berlin; attending Jewish and Protestant s...

  2. 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...

  3. Gertrud K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gertrud K., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1923. Mrs. K. recalls a comfortable life; strong Jewish identity; watching mass demonstrations when the Germans marched in; the plundering of her father's business two days later; ransacking of their home; and public humiliation of her father. She remembers Kristallnacht; her father and one brother's arrest; her other brother hiding; several weeks later her father's letter from Dachau; receiving permission to leave on a Kindertransport to Scotland; reluctance to leave with her father in prison; and begging a Gestapo offic...

  4. Abraham P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Abraham P., who was born in Mir, Poland in 1909. He recalls the rich, Jewish culture growing up in Bia?ystok; learning several languages; Jewish holiday celebrations; attending medical school in Lie?ge, Belgium; his leadership role in Po'alei Zion; his parents's and sister's emigration to Belgium in 1932; German invasion in 1940; his parents' flight to Lyon in unoccupied France, then the United States; obtaining papers under a false name; hiding in Brussels; smuggling himself to Lyon in unoccupied France in 1942; joining the Resistance; his sister's incarceration when...

  5. Itzhak D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Itzhak D., who was born in Vilna, Russia (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1916, one of five children. He recounts participating in Hashomer Hatzair with Abba Kovner; Soviet occupation; working with the writer Szmerke Kaczerginski; German invasion; anti-Jewish violence; ghettoization; hiding during round-ups; forced labor in a military fuel depot outside the ghetto; selling stolen fuel to purchase food; escaping; hiding with a German guard who had befriended him in the fuel depot; sneaking back into the ghetto; hiding with his family during the liquidation; capture; t...

  6. Israel A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Israel A., who was born in Plotsk (P?ock), Poland in 1925. He relates his family's transfer to the Starachowice ghetto in 1940; the worsening conditions there in 1942; and the action of the Einsatzkommando and subsequent deportation of his parents and brother to Treblinka, while he and his older brother were driven to a factory which comprised the Starachowice concentration camp. He tells of the brutal conditions in the camp (he later testified against its gestapo head at the Frankfurt war crimes trials) where, eluding selections and mass murders, he remained until th...

  7. Margarete L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Margarete L., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1924. She recalls her father's trip to the Soviet Union from which he never returned; expulsion from school at age thirteen; forced labor; a non-Jewish co-worker who provided them with extra food; destruction of her mother's business during Kristallnacht; receiving protection for herself, sister and mother from the Swedish embassy since they were Soviet citizens; arrest and torture by the Gestapo for refusing to name Jews in hiding; and transfer to Bergen-Belsen. She describes the pervasive fear; transfer of Soviet citi...

  8. 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...

  9. Imrich H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Imrich H., who was born in Prešov, Czecholslovkia (presently Slovkia) in 1923, the youngest of three children. He recalls cordial relations with non-Jews; a wonderful childhood; antisemitism beginning in 1938; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; his father's death from illness in 1940; expulsion from school as a Jew in 1941; keeping a diary; hiding after deportations started; obtaining false papers as a Slovak; moving to Bratislava in June 1942; finding a job; living with a family (they did not know he was Jewish), then in his workplace; visiting his parents in Sabino...

  10. Simon M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Simon M., who was born in Ziegenhals, Germany (now G?ucho?azy, Poland) in 1905. He recalls his impoverished childhood in a large family; his father's military service in World War I; completing eight grade; working as a peddler; marriage in 1928; his first son's birth in 1930; living in Breslau when Hitler came to power; serving as a liaison to the Gestapo; helping Jews emigrate; Kristallnacht; arrest and deportation to Buchenwald; release with assistance from an SS officer; receiving help from Jews in Leipzig; returning to Breslau; traveling to Shanghai via Italy in ...

  11. Rena G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rena G., who was born in 1936 in Thessalonike?, Greece. She recalls her family's move to Athens in 1940 due to the German occupation; hiding in a basement; her father's activities in the resistance; posing as non-Jews; extreme hunger; attempting to reach Turkey by boat in 1943; and capture by the Germans. She recounts their interrogation in Mou?dhros on Lemnos Island; her father being taken elsewhere; being jailed with her mother and uncle for three months; her mother's influence with the Gestapo commander, resulting in Mrs. G's release from prison to live with a fami...

  12. Madeleine D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Madeleine D., a Roman Catholic, who was born in Strasbourg, France in approximately 1923. She recounts attending Catholic school; German occupation; relocation with her family to Pe?rigueux for a year; returning home; working for an agency which enabled her to smuggle food, clothes and papers to French and English POWs for the underground; arrest in Saarebourg in 1942 and interrogation by the Gestapo; transfer to Schirmeck a month later; slave labor; the prisoners in her barrack surreptitiously praying at night; hospitalization; a prisoner-doctor smuggling her food; r...

  13. 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...

  14. Paul M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Paul M., who was born in Berlin, Germany to Polish immigrants in 1922. He recalls involvement in Zionist organizations; attending a Jewish school; the decision of some relatives to emigrate in 1933; a beating by Hitler Youth in 1934; his parents' decision to leave following a Gestapo interrogation in 1936; their journey to Palestine via Austria and Trieste (his parents had money smuggled to them in Italy); their emigration to the United States in 1938; attending high school; cessation of communications from family in Europe after 1939; being drafted in 1942; encounter...

  15. Leopold Z. Holocaust Testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leopold Z., who was born in Bautzen, Germany, in 1922 and moved to Breslau as a child. Mr. Z. describes his childhood and religious education; the beginning of the war and his family's fatally passive reaction; forced labor in a factory near Breslau; and the deportation of his entire family, except himself and one of his four brothers, to a town near Lublin. He tells of being taken in by an orphanage, where he and his brother were given false French papers; their betrayal and subsequent arrest; and their year-long imprisonment while awaiting trial for treason. Mr. Z. ...

  16. 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-...

  17. 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...

  18. Esther J. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Esther J., who was born in Wielun?, Poland in 1918. Mrs. J. recalls her close family of nine children; their religious observances; antisemitism after 1933; her engagement; her father's death immediately before the war; her fiance serving in the Polish army; German invasion in September 1939; fleeing with her family to join her fiance in the Soviet zone; and returning home to find their estate looted by Poles. She describes her family being fingerprinted by the Gestapo; leaving for ?o?dz? with her fiance and mother; marriage; fleeing to Kovel? in the Soviet zone; tran...

  19. 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...

  20. Eva W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva W., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1937. She recalls her parents' comfortable, bohemian life; her father's residency at the Jewish hospital; moving into the hospital with the families of other staff members in October 1941; friendship with two girls (Eva and Rita); the Gestapo presence; monthly deportations; food shortages; her parents' strained marriage; remaining underground during the Battle of Berlin; spending a summer recuperating in Switzerland; her father's death in 1947 after delaying surgery, which she believes was a form of suicide; living in the hos...