Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 1 to 20 of 116
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Hanna F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hanna F., who was born in Czemierniki, near Lublin, Poland in 1923. She mentions prewar life in a mixed neighborhood and details the changes which occurred in the wake of the German occuption, including her slave labor. She relates her family's evacuation to Parczew in 1942; their hiding during round-ups for deportation; and the splitting up of her family (she alone survived the Holocaust). She tells of escaping from a slave labor camp near Parczew, securing false papers, and joining a Polish (non-Jewish) labor transport to Germany, where she remained from October, 19...

  2. Erich K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Erich K., who was born into an observant family in Moravia. Mr. K. describes his happy childhood; the German occupation in 1939; his arrest, three months later, by the Gestapo for helping people cross the border; and his work in the camps of Dachau (1940), Neuengamme (1941), and Auschwitz (1942-1944) as a locksmith and plumber. He relates witnessing medical experimentation and other atrocities and his gradual desensitization; explains how he managed to survive, and help others, including his wife and son, to survive, even though he was labelled a "Geheimnistra?ger", i...

  3. 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...

  4. 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...

  5. 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...

  6. Lepa M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lepa M., a non-Jew who was born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1914. She describes the political atmosphere and situation of the Jews in Belgrade before the war; her marriage in 1935; the German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941; and the anti-Jewish legislation and mass deportations which followed. She relates that in 1943 she and her husband hid five Jews in the basement of their house in Prokuplje, and that several months later they were discovered, and, along with Mrs. M.'s husband, were taken away and shot by the Gestapo in Nis?. Mrs. M. speaks of her life in Belgrade after ...

  7. 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...

  8. 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...

  9. 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...

  10. 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...

  11. Beba L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Beba L., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1925, the oldest of four children. She recalls her father's emphasis on Jewish education; attending private school; aspiring to a university education; Soviet occupation; German invasion in June 1941; anti-Jewish restrictions; hearing about mass killings at Ponary; ghettoization in September 1941; her father arranging her escape with assistance from a Polish officer; obtaining false papers; hiding on a farm; returning to the ghetto to be with her parents, although she never saw her family again; working for the Judenrat; witne...

  12. 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...

  13. 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...

  14. Ruth W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ruth W., who was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1914. Mrs. W. recalls her childhood; her father's death in 1927; being legally barred from university attendance; working as a bookeeper for her uncle; marriage in December 1938; staying with their respective parents to avoid registering; and failing to obtain affidavits from American relatives. She tells of forced labor in a munitions plant; her mother's deportation to Ri?ga in August 1942; her husband joining her when his parents were deported to Terezi?n; hiding with a farmer when her husband's deportation seemed imminen...

  15. Leon H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leon H., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland, in 1919. Mr. H. tells of prewar antisemitism; becoming a carpenter like his father and brothers; his family's move to the ?o?dz? ghetto in 1940; starvation; a German soldier who refused to believe that Jews could be tradesmen; witnessing atrocities while doing carpentry at the local Gestapo headquarters; his mother's death after a beating; and surrendering to join his father and siblings when they were rounded-up. He details conditions on the deportation train; separation from his father and sister at Auschwitz; selection and t...

  16. Abraham W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Abraham W., who was born in Drohobych, Ukraine (then Poland), in 1906. Mr. W. describes the roles of Leon Reich and David Herzog in his admission to university in Graz; his association with Nobel laureate Victor Hess; transfer to Charles University in Prague in 1931 due to antisemitism; becoming a pharmacist in Rava-Ru?ska in December 1939; learning of his mother's murder by a Ukrainian; ghettoization; friendship with the Pole selected by the Germans to replace him; and sheltering a woman escapee from a deportation train to nearby Belzec. He recalls a Gestapo operativ...

  17. 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. ...

  18. 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...

  19. 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...

  20. 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...