Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 21 to 40 of 116
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Alfred K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alfred K., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1921, the youngest of three brothers. He recounts attending public school; antisemitic harassment; participating in socialist and Zionist organizations; Austrians welcoming the Germans during the Anschluss; one brother emigrating to relatives in the United States, the other, as a physician with a Kindertransport, to England; the concierge protecting him and his parents during Kristallnacht; fleeing with an aunt and uncle to Belgium; living in Antwerp; placement in Merksplas refugee camp; German invasion; fleeing to France;...

  2. 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...

  3. Serge B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Serge B., who was born in France in 1921. He recalls his parents were Russian immigrants; their assimilated, secular life in Paris; not feeling Jewish until German invasion; his father's escape from the July 1942 round-up with help from a police friend; being sent with his siblings to live with their uncle in Cannes; joining the Resistance; becoming head of his group; arrest in 1943; violent interrogations; the Gestapo discovering he was Jewish; transfer to a prison in Nice, then Drancy; digging an escape tunnel with fourteen prisoners; discovery of the tunnel; confin...

  4. 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...

  5. 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...

  6. 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...

  7. Anna R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Anna R., a Lutheran, who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1918. She recalls her family's commitment to and activities on behalf of the Social Democrats; the rise of fascism; her arrest for anti-Nazi activities; two one-year jail terms; release; helping found a home for children of suicides; hearing the Gestapo was seeking her; hiding; illegally entering Switzerland with assistance from the Communist Party; acceptance as a political refugee; meeting her future husband, a German-Jewish refugee; receiving contraband from an unknown source; arrest; learning she was pregnant...

  8. 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...

  9. 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...

  10. 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...

  11. Shmuel G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Shmuel G., who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1923. He recounts attending a Jewish German language school; participating in the Bar Kochba swim club; his sister's emigration to England in 1939; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; studying plumbing; his father's death in 1940; slave labor for the Hlinka guard; release after four months; deportation to Sered; his mother hiding with non-Jews; bringing her to Sered with assistance from Alexander Pressburger, the head Jew of the camp; moving her out to a Czech family; his privileged position ...

  12. 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...

  13. Celine P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Celine P., who was born in Zgierz, Poland, one of four children. She recalls her family's affluence; visiting relatives in Warsaw; a close and large extended family; attending a Polish school; antisemitic harassment; German invasion in September 1939; her father's flight east; exemption from deportation due to an uncle sending foreign visas to her, her mother, and siblings; assistance from a former nanny who worked for the Gestapo; transport to Belgium via Berlin; reunion with their uncle who had arranged their emigration; traveling to Paris where "everything was back...

  14. Rolf F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rolf F., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1916. He recounts his father was a German industrialist and his mother the daughter of a Jew who had converted in 1908 (she was baptized and raised as a Christian); half siblings from his father's previous two marriages, the first to a non-Jew, the second to his mother's sister (both wives had died); not knowing he was legally Jewish until his expulsion from school in 1933; attending technical school in Mittweida because he was barred from university; draft into a forced labor battalion; returning to school after his release...

  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. 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...

  17. 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...

  18. Saul C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Saul C., who was born in Krako?w, Poland in 1925. He recalls his family's relative poverty; attending Bund summer camps; German occupation; the family's move to Cze?stochowa; forced labor in the ghetto; transformation of the ghetto into labor camps (his mother, sister, and one brother were deported to Treblinka); hiding during a round-up; capture and escape; rejoining his father in the camp; separation from his father; escaping with a friend; building a bunker in a forest; hostile Polish partisans (AK); returning to camp because he feared death; denunciation; imprison...

  19. 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...

  20. 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-...