Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 21 to 40 of 1,814
Country: United States
  1. 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. ...

  2. 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...

  3. 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...

  4. Susan M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Susan M., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1925. She describes her happy childhood as a performer in a successful children's theatre; her parent's divorce; her rejection from the art academy due to the Jewish quota; the nonchalant attitude of the Jewish community until the German occupation in 1944; anti-Semitic legislation; hiding with her father with the aid of his non-Jewish fiancee; the establishment of the ghetto; and the reign of the Hungarian Gestapo. She relates working as a nurse while hiding on false papers; being recognized by a non-Jewish friend who tu...

  5. Emmanuel F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Emmanuel F., who was born in 1922 in Kosiv, Poland (presently Ukraine), the oldest of six children. He recounts his family's affluence; attending engineering school in Warsaw beginning in 1936; German invasion; returning home; Soviet occupation; military draft; German invasion before he could report for duty; forced labor with his father and brothers in a brick factory; his father's death; selection as a mechanic (the rest of his family was deported or killed); transfer to Kuty; escaping with assistance from a German soldier; capture; escaping; joining partisans in fo...

  6. Pierre T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Pierre T., a non-Jew, who was born in Brittany, France, in 1909. Mr. T. recounts serving as chief purser on the ocean liner Normandie in 1939; his capture at the defeat of the French army in 1940; escaping to join his family in Cha?teaubriant; shock at the execution of twenty-seven townsmen; obtaining a job which enabled him to issue false documents; and serving the Resistance as a guide for downed Allied fliers. He recalls his arrest in January 1944; Gestapo interrogations and torture; being transported naked (to deter escape attempts) in overcrowded boxcars to Mauth...

  7. 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-...

  8. 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...

  9. 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...

  10. Renate R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Renate R., who was born in Berlin in 1923. Mrs. R. describes her family background; life in Germany; and their move to Yugoslavia in 1933; her father's illness and death in 1940; the German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941; and the forced move with her mother and brother to a Jewish section. She describes living with a Yugoslav family and her mother's imprisonment by the Gestapo. Mrs. R. recounts working for the partisans; having to leave the Yugoslav family due to fear of betrayal; thinking of suicide; and being aided by the mother of a school friend who helped arrange...

  11. 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...

  12. 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...

  13. 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...

  14. Simon R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Simon R., who was born in Ozorko?w, Poland in 1916 to an orthodox family of six children. He recalls his family moving between Ozorko?w and ?owicz; working from age ten; disbelief that anything bad would occur; opening a store near Ozorko?w in 1939; German invasion; fleeing to Ozorko?w; learning the Gestapo was looking for him; hiding in a village; returning to Ozorko?w; and three months in jail in ?e?czyca. Mr. R. tells of his return to Ozorko?w; his brother's arrest; ghettoization; forced labor; the community saving a boy from public hanging for not wearing the yell...

  15. Rose S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rose S., who was born in Minsk, Byelorussia, in 1921. She tells of her family's move to Kon?skie, Poland; the outbreak of war in 1939 while she was nearby in Przedbo?rz; fleeing with her boyfriend to Ostro?w Lubelski in the Soviet zone; his return; and her marriage to a local artist/musician. Mrs. S. recalls the German invasion; ghettoization; her husband's murder in an Aktion; working as a housekeeper for German soldiers; hiding during a round-up in which her in-laws were taken; being forewarned of Aktions by a German soldier; and escaping with false papers to Zdolbu...

  16. Lisbeth B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lisbeth B., who was born in Posen, Germany (presently Poznan?, Poland) in 1911. She recounts living in a small village; moving to Berlin for safety during World War I; returning to Posen which became Poland; attending a German school; her father's death in 1928; working as a tutor and in a German publishing house; assisting Jews deported from Germany in 1938; participating in Zionist organizations; German invasion in 1939; deportation in December to Ostro?w Lubelski; traveling to Warsaw; working as a tutor; her mother declining a non-Jew's offer to hide them; ghettoiz...

  17. 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...

  18. 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...

  19. 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...

  20. 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...