Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 1 to 20 of 4,487
Country: United States
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Arie Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Arie Z., who was born in Pruz︠h︡any, Poland (presently Belarus), in 1923, the elder of two children. He recounts his father managing the estate of a Russian princess; attending Hebrew schools; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; increasing antisemtism, including his father being fired in 1938; his finding another job on a distant estate near the Bialowieza Forest; his visits; completing gymnasium in 1939; German invasion on September 1; joining his father with his mother and sister; Soviet occupation; returning home; his father joining them; completing final exams for ...

  2. Eliezer L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eliezer L., who was born in Dyatlovo, Russia (presently Dzi︠a︡tlava, Belarus) in 1908, one of three brothers. He recounts living in Baranavichy; German occupation during World War I; working with the Bolsheviks in the 1917 revolution; his father's death in 1920; participating in Hechalutz; marriage in 1930; the births of two children; Soviet occupation in 1939; banishment by the Soviets to Valozhyn; frequent secret visits to his family; German invasion in June 1941; fleeing to Minsk; arrest; posing as a non-Jew when Jews were separated; forced labor; escaping to Baran...

  3. Sima S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sima S., who was born in Vilna, Poland (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1924, one of three children. She recounts attending Hebrew and Yiddish schools; a rich Jewish cultural environment; participating in drama, choir, and scouts; antisemitic harassment; Soviet occupation, then Lithuanian control in 1939; she and her family living with an uncle in Dokshytsy; their return to Vilnius; performing in a Yiddish theater; German invasion in June 1941; anti-Jewish restrictions; a round-up including her brother and father (she never saw them again); brief imprisonment; ghetto...

  4. Josef S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Josef S., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1930, the third of six children. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; attending cheder and public school; antisemitic harassment; German invasion in September 1939; cessation of schooling; smuggling goods with his sister and mother to support the family; ghettoization; smuggling food into the ghetto; his youngest sister's death from illness; his illness due to starvation; an aunt assisting his recovery; hospitalization for typhus; learning of his parents' deaths upon release; his youngest brother's death; he and his sisters co...

  5. Uri C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Uri C., who was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1928, one of three children. He recalls annual visits with his younger brother, Daniel C., to his paternal grandparents in Žasliai; attending a Hebrew gymnasium; his father's car accident in 1938 resulting in a one-year hospitalization; his mother assuming responsibility for his business; Soviet occupation; attending a Soviet camp in Palanga in summer 1941; German invasion in June; Lithuanians separating the Jewish children, locking them in a synagogue, and beating them; their parents sending buses three weeks later to re...

  6. Salomon R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Salomon R., who was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1925, one of three children of Polish émigrés. He recounts his father's death in 1933; attending public school and weekly Yiddish lessons; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; increasing antisemitism by right-wing extremists; housing German-Jewish refugees; German invasion in May 1940; registering as Jews when required to do so; recruitment by his brother-in-law to the Resistance at age fifteen; obtaining false papers; assignments delivering underground newspapers and smuggling people to northern France via Kortrijk (C...

  7. Emrich G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Emrich G., who was born in Ivanka Pri Nitre, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1925, one of two children. He recalls cordial relations with non-Jews; attending a local elementary school; high school in Nitra; anti-Jewish laws in March 1939, resulting in school expulsion; training as a dental assistant; confiscation of the family business; deportation by Hlinka guard to Sered in March 1942, then a week later to Majdanek; slave labor building a camp; arrival of his uncle, then his father in April; arranging to be together; observing an officer smothering his uncle ...

  8. Lusia S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lusia S., who was born in Minsk, Belarus in 1922, the oldest of three children. She recounts her family fleeing from the Bolsheviks to Vilnius when she was three months old; their relative affluence; attending a Yiddish gymnasium; her father's participation in the Bund; her mother transferring her to a Polish school; spending summers in Nemenčinė and Pabradė; participating in Hashomer Hatzair and Gordonyah; university studies in pharmacology; violent antisemitic harassment by Endecjas; Soviet occupation in September 1939; Akiva members living with them and becoming...

  9. Moshe M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Moshe M., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1922, the third of four children. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; attending cheder at age three; completing Jewish trade school in 1938; German invasion in 1939; anti-Jewish restrictions, including confiscation of his father's business; he and his older sister working to support the family; ghettoization; smuggling food; working in a battery factory; volunteering for road building near Łęczna; assistance from a non-Jewish woman; escaping; doing farm work posing as a non-Jew; arrest; incarceration in Lublin; release by a...

  10. Pinchas Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Pinchas Z., who was born in Baranów, Poland in 1930, the older of two brothers. He recalls his father's successful tailoring business; attending cheder and public school; antisemitic harassment by teachers and school mates; two of his mother's sisters living with them; German occupation in 1939; anti-Jewish restrictions; transfer of all Jews to the poorest area in 1941; his father continuing to sew for Poles in exchange for food; a Polish friend warning his father of an expulsion in May 1942; hiding with his father's Polish friend, then in a forest near Pogonów; joi...

  11. Arthur P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Arthur P., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1912, one of three children. He recounts his father's military service in World War I; attending a Jewish school; participating in leftist youth groups; apprenticing as a merchant in 1928; non-Jewish friends shunning him starting in 1933; his sister's emigration to Australia and his brother's to Holland, and later Palestine; working for a Jewish social welfare organization where he met Recha Freier, a founder of Youth Aliyah; escorting kindertransports to Denmark and Sweden; Kristallnacht; leading a hachsharah in Havelberg...

  12. Mor L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mor L., who was born in Davyd-Haradok, Russia (presently Belarus) in 1917, one of seven children. He recounts attending cheder, then a Hebrew school; participating in Hashomer Haleumi; living with a sister in Vilnius to attend a Polish gymnasium beginning in 1931; two sisters emigrating to Palestine; beginning university studies in chemistry; antisemitic harassment; a humiliating beating by Endecja members; Soviet occupation in 1939; completing university; a futile attempt to obtain emigration papers in Kaunus; returning to Vilnius; German invasion in June 1941; force...

  13. Mickal E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Mickal E., who was born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia (presently Czech Republic) in 1926, the younger of two children. She recounts her family's assimilated lifestyle; attending a Czech school; cordial relations with non-Jews; participating in a Zionist youth group; expulsion from school in March 1939 due to German occupation; confiscation of the family's business; moving in with her grandparents; her father's deportation for forced labor, her mother leaving to earn money in Prague, and her brother moving to a hachshara; forming a subgroup with four other girls within th...

  14. Jan V. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jan V., who was born in Rumbeke, Belgium in 1922, the oldest of three children in a religious Catholic family. He recounts living in Louvain from age three; attending Catholic school; participating in Scouting; German invasion in May 1940; traveling with his cousin to Tournai, then Rouen to enlist; being shipped by train to Anduze, France; repatriation about six weeks later; living briefly in Tongeren; priesthood training in monasteries in Bocholt for two years, in Gits for two years, then in Thy-le-Château; arrest in July 1944 with thirteen others from the monastery...

  15. Leib B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leib B., who was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1929. He recalls his parents' divorce in 1937; his mother's remarriage; Soviet occupation; German invasion in 1941; his biological father's killing as a member of the intelligentsia; ghettoization; assignment with other children to agricultural work; smuggling food into the ghetto; a Lithuanian policeman saving him from a round-up for mass killing; writing songs; caring for his younger sister; helping the ghetto underground; public hanging of an escapee; a Jewish policeman saving him and his family; transfer to Kauern-Scha...

  16. Kazimiera B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Kazimiera B., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1918, an only child. Ms. B. notes her assimilated household; involvement in communism from age fourteen leading to school expulsions and brief imprisonment in 1936; university studies in Warsaw starting in 1937; antisemitism; returning to Łódź with her mother on August 31, 1939; German invasion; traveling to Warsaw with her parents; their return to Łódź; illegally entering Soviet-occupied territory with her parents; attending school in Lʹviv while her parents taught in Białystok; German invasion in June 1941; working...

  17. Miriam A. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Miriam A., who was born in Suchdol, Czechoslovakia (presently Czech Republic) in 1923, the youngest of three children. She recounts being the only Jewish family in town; a happy childhood; cordial relations with non-Jews; attending school in Kutná Hora; antisemitic harassment by teachers; attending boarding schools where they did not know she was Jewish until March 1939; German occupation; visiting Jewish friends in neighboring Kolín; anti-Jewish laws, including travel bans and confiscation of her father's business; hiding valuables with non-Jewish friends, includin...

  18. Itzchak Y. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Itzchak Y., who was born in Białystok, Poland in 1926, the younger by sixteen years of two children. He recalls attending a Taḥkemoni school; his family's orthodoxy; participating in a Zionist youth group; attending summer camp in Płatkownica in 1938; antisemitic harassment by children; Soviet occupation in September 1939; German invasion in June 1941; witnessing the main synagogue set on fire with hundreds of Jews inside; ghettoization; working at several jobs; his sister, who was blond, trading possessions outside the ghetto for food; hiding with his family during ...

  19. Zeev F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Zeev F., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1926. He recalls his family's affluence; his sister's birth in 1930; attending a Jewish private school; German invasion in September 1939; anti-Jewish restrictions, including confiscation of his father's business and schools closing; ghettoization; severe hunger and cold; working in a sewing workshop; his father's death; his father's friend arranging his reassignment to a kitchen, thus providing the family with more food; joining Hashomer Hatzair, an "oasis" in a horrible environment; meeting his future wife at a meeting; rea...

  20. Israel B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Israel B., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1925, the eldest of two children. He recalls participating in Hashomer Hatzair; his father's death in 1936; his uncles paying for him to attend a Jewish gymnasium; finding ways to help support his family, including singing in the main synagogue choir; summer vacations with his grandmother in Malech; German invasion in 1939; anti-Jewish restrictions; his mother removing his star and sending him to her brothers in Warsaw, hoping he would survive; learning they had left; joining his grandmother and other relatives in Soviet-oc...