Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 61 to 80 of 116
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Alexander R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alexander R., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1908. Mr. R. recalls his youth in a prominent, assimilated family; loss of the family shoe store during the 1919 Communist regime; suppression of the Communists; return of the family business; antisemitism in school and university admissions; law studies; and receiving his doctorate in 1930. He recounts his law apprenticeship with a Jewish politician; military service starting in 1931; attending officer candidate school; antisemitic incidents; discharge in 1932; return to law practice; the political shift to the right...

  2. Michel T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Michel T., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland, an only child. He recounts moving to his aunt's home in Breslau, Germany (presently Wroc?aw, Poland) when he was seven; his bar mitzvah; attending high school; being accused of sabotage after Hitler's ascent to power in 1933; fleeing to Bordeaux; visiting his family in Poland in 1937; moving to Vienna; Austrians warmly welcoming the Germans during the Anschluss; anti-Jewish violence; fleeing with his fiance?e in late October 1938; interrogation by the Gestapo in Saarbru?cken; release by the Gestapo and their assistance crossi...

  3. 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...

  4. Kurt S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Kurt S., who was born in Krefeld, Germany in 1924. He recalls being barred from university in 1938 due to anti-Jewish restrictions; working on a Jewish training farm in Silesia; Gestapo dissolution of the farm in 1941; returning to Krefeld; and transport with his parents to the Ri?ga ghetto in December. Mr. S. describes unloading ships; refusing a ship captain's offer to smuggle him to Denmark in order to remain with his parents; work details in Ri?ga, Salaspils, Kaiserwald and other places; frequent deaths from starvation, hangings, and shootings; narrowly escaping e...

  5. Claire S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Claire S., who was born in Germany, the oldest of four children of Polish émigrés. She recounts her family's move to Brussels; attending school; working at fourteen to help support her family; joining the Bund; her father's arrest for debt resulting in his deportation to Germany; obtaining money to secure his return; German invasion; one brother hiding in a monastery; anti-Jewish restrictions; marriage in 1942; obtaining false papers; her sister's deportation; bribing officials to free an underground member from the Gestapo; her father's round-up and deportation; ar...

  6. Roger P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape of Roger P., who was born in 1922. He recalls implementation of anti-Jewish measures in France; incarceration in Pithiviers; hiding in Brunoy after his release; obtaining false papers; fleeing to Nice, then Grenoble; working in Vif; his arrest in Uriage in 1942; escaping; hiding with his father; unsuccessful attempts to emigrate; returning to Grenoble; living under false papers in Nice; arrest and interrogation by the Gestapo in 1943; refusing to identify Jews in hiding; transfer to Drancy; deportation to Auschwitz in October; assignment to the night shift in the Janina mines; bea...

  7. 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...

  8. 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...

  9. Otto L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Otto L., who was born in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland in 1909 and raised in Konstanz, Germany. He recounts his family's long history in Germany and Switzerland; his parents' non-involvement with Judaism; active participation in gymnastics, swimming, and scouting; never experiencing antisemitism until an encounter with a non-local scout group; his bar mitzvah; an apprenticeship in Nuremberg for two years; friendship with a police officer who provided him with information that later saved his life; working in Bochum for thirteen months, then for his father; a job in Augsbur...

  10. 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...

  11. 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 ...

  12. 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...

  13. Margot H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Margot H., who was born in Mainz, Germany in 1918. She recalls growing up in Gau-Algesheim where she was the only Jewish child her age; pleasant relations with townspeople until 1933; encounters with Nazi teachers and youth groups; her father conducting business at night to avoid the Gestapo; working near Frankfurt; returning home to escape violent antisemitism; entering a Catholic sewing school; and moving with her family to Wiesbaden where they were not known. Mrs. H. recounts working in a dress shop; her brother-in-law's suicide and her sister's death; her brother'...

  14. Jules T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jules T., a non-Jew, who was born in Bois d'Haine, Belgium in 1916. He recounts his father's work as a miner and his union activities; apprenticing as a printer in 1930; his own union activities; military draft; visits from his father in Diepenbeek; capture in Rumbeke on May 28, 1940; escaping on May 30; returning home; working as a printer; union and Resistance activities; organizing a strike in September 1942; imprisonment in Mons for ten days; sabotaging trains; arrest in December; being brought to Gestapo headquarters in La Louvie?re; transfer to Charleroi, then B...

  15. Claire S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Claire S., who was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1935 to Polish parents. She recalls her parents' divorce; her father's remarriage; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; her mother requesting that non-Jewish neighbors care for Mrs. S.; her mother's deportation to Auschwitz (she never saw her again); her father visiting prior to being deported (he perished); a loving relationship with her foster family; not attending school for fear of discovery; and traveling to Lie?ge and Verviers to avoid Gestapo searches. She recounts her aunt's legal action to obtain custody o...

  16. 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...

  17. 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...

  18. 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...

  19. Simone C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Simone C., who was born in Magdeburg, Germany in 1922. She recalls fleeing to Paris in 1933 when the Gestapo came to arrest her father and brother; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; her older brother's emigration to Palestine in 1934; German invasion; her father volunteering for the French military; fleeing with her mother and younger brother to Toulouse; their return to Paris; her internment in the Ve?lodrome d'Hiver, then Gurs; her mother and brother moving to be near her; a guard allowing her to visit them; not returning; living in Pe?rigueux with her family (her ...

  20. 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...