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Displaying items 21 to 40 of 116
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Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. 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...

  2. Eli C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eli C., who was born in Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1917. He recounts participating in Blau-Weiss; working at a Zionist summer camp with Teddy Kollek; his brother's emigration to Palestine in 1934; attending university; antisemitic harassment; Anschluss; warnings from their non-Jewish landlord of German raids; moving to Zurich, then Geneva; arrest in September 1939; expulsion from Basel to a Gestapo prison in Lörrach; transfer from prison to prison en route to Sachsenhausen; forced labor in a brick factory; beatings, hunger, and lack of sanitation; public ex...

  3. 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...

  4. 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...

  5. 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...

  6. Ernest H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ernest H., who was born in 1925 in Neumarkt, Germany. He recalls moving to Fu?rth in 1938 so he and his siblings could attend a Jewish school (they were expelled in Neumarkt); his brother's emigration to the United States in 1941; deportation with his parents and sister to Jungfernhof, Latvia in December 1941; forced labor as a car mechanic, which he believes saved him from extermination; transfer to the Ri?ga ghetto in July 1942 (he notes the sadism of the Gestapo commander), then to Kaiserwald and Stutthof in 1943; and liberation from Rybno (Rieben) by Soviet troops...

  7. Ernie M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ernie M., who was born in Cologne, Germany in 1916, one of three children. He recounts his father was an American citizen, thus he was as well; attending Jewish school; working as an auto mechanic; participation in Habonim; becoming a counselor at a Youth Aliyah camp outside of Berlin; police confiscating the identification papers of everyone there in November 1938; traveling to Berlin; arriving on Kristallnacht; observing Jews being beaten and synagogues burning; visiting a friend who had just been released from a concentration camp; returning to the youth camp; lear...

  8. Ervin S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ervin S., a non-Jew, who was born in Liberec, Czechoslovakia in 1927. He recalls his family's poverty; his father's communist activities; their anti-Nazi activities; his father's enlistment in the Czech military; his father's arrest by the Gestapo; having to join the Hitler Youth, then the Wehrmacht; capture in Italy by United States troops in February 1945; incarceration as a POW in Livorno and Naples; release in 1947; prohibition from returning to Czechoslovakia because he had served in the Wehrmacht; illegally crossing the border; reunion with his family; and recei...

  9. 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...

  10. Eva V. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva V., who was born in 1922 in Oradea Mare, Romania. She recalls her family's high position in local society; their sense of Hungarian identity; graduation from a convent school in 1939; Hungarian occupation; compulsory service for Jewish men in Hungarian labor battalions; the Gestapo commandeering their home; living with her grandfather in the ghetto; refusing to leave her family to escape to Romania; her grandfather's death; and deportation to Auschwitz. Mrs. V. recounts separation from her parents, whom she never saw again; transfer to Kaiserwald, Danzig and Stutt...

  11. 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...

  12. 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...

  13. 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...

  14. Fredrika L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Fredrika L., who was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1917. She recalls attending pharmacy school; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; marriage; paying large sums in 1942 for false papers to travel to Switzerland via Belgium; the Gestapo arresting her husband en route to Switzerland (she never saw him again), but releasing her; returning to warn her parents not to take that train (they had already left and were detained and deported); hiding in many places, often with her brother; a Belgian family who took them in; contemplating suicide, but deciding against i...

  15. Georges D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Georges D., a non-Jew, who was born in Ixelles, Belgium in 1911. He recounts his mother's death in 1918; his family's move to Brussels; training as a mechanic in a technical school; military service beginning in 1931; working as a policeman; marriage in 1936; the births of two daughters; German invasion on May 10, 1940; military draft; fleeing to France on May 16; encountering Germans; returning home the day after Belgian capitulation; joining the Resistance; delivering underground journals; hiding individuals sought by the Gestapo; obtaining false papers for Jews; ar...

  16. 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...

  17. 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...

  18. 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...

  19. Harry B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Harry B., who was born in Gorlice, Poland in 1929, one of five children. He recalls his family's affluence; German bombardment; escaping to Jas?o; his father and oldest brother boarding a train which left before the rest had boarded; returning home; ghettoziation; a Gestapo shooting his brother; a friend on the Judenrat convincing the Gestapo not to touch the rest of the family; deportation of all Jews in 1941; remaining behind to clear bodies (he never saw his mother or siblings again); transfer to P?aszo?w; a privileged position caring for the Kommandant and his fam...

  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...