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Displaying items 4,281 to 4,300 of 4,487
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Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Emery G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Emery G., who was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1933. Mr. G., whose parents divorced when he was four, recalls life in wartime Budapest; imposition of anti-Semitic restrictions; moving with his mother to several different apartments in the city; German occupation in 1944; going into hiding; discussions among those in hiding of deportations and concentration camps; and executions of Jews. He tells of Hungary's capitulation in October 1944; working as an underground courier for Raoul Wallenberg; being hidden with his mother in the home of her Christian employer; a narro...

  2. Philip H. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Philip H., who was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1922. He describes a violent childhood in a poor Jewish neighborhood in Chicago, and vividly recalls the isolated experiences of love and kindness which proved crucial to his later outlook and conduct. He also discusses the dissolution of his mystical view of the unity of all life, as represented by the "Shema", after witnessing the devastation of Mannheim during World War II. Professor H. documents how his study of cruelty and evil eventually focused on the Holocaust, and how his discovery of goodness in its midst, exem...

  3. Eva F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva F., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1936. She recounts her father was a physician and her mother a nurse; living in the Berlin Jewish Hospital from 1938; seeing many people leave and never return; her parents not speaking in front of her, but seeing them upset and distraught; playing with other children; Allied bombings; liberation by Soviet troops in 1945; assistance from Jewish officers; attending school; living in a refugee camp; and emigration to the United States in 1949. Ms. F. recalls wearing the yellow star; receiving German reparation payments; and her...

  4. Charles B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Charles B., who was drafted into the United States military in 1941. He recalls attending officer's training school; fighting in Italy, France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany; liberating Ohrdruf as part of the 89th Division; total lack of preparation for encountering a concentration camp; smelling it for two days prior to arrival; stacks of corpses; his strong physical response; liberating Weimar and Zwickau; former prisoners and U.S. troops killing German guards; assisting emaciated prisoners; and later interrogating German POWs.

  5. Peter G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Peter G., a distinguished scholar and professor of history, who was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1923. Professor G. describes his childhood and education; his parents' atheism; the Nuremberg laws; the different opinions people held about the Nazis; his family's haphazard plans to emigrate; Kristallnacht; obtaining passage to Cuba; his two year stay in Havana; and his emigration to the United States. He also discusses the opposing theories of whether the Holocaust could happen again; the impact that the refugees had on United States intellectual life; and his thoughts o...

  6. John M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of John M., who served in the United States military during World War II. He recounts attending officer training school in 1941; attachment to an anti-aircraft regiment; transfer to England, then Oran; landing in Sicily; transfer to Marseille; moving through Germany; observing emaciated prisoners in striped uniforms and prisoners of war in Seeshaupt; corpses piled in box cars; moving to Landsberg; corpses everywhere; photographing the camp; guarding German prisoners in Schwabmu?nchen; and preparing a barrack to contain war criminals in Kornwestheim. He shows photographs.

  7. Sylvia B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sylvia B., who was born in Velykyi? Bereznyi?, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine), in 1928. Mrs. B. speaks of her early family life; her Orthodox upbringing; and the absence of prewar Czech antisemitism. She recalls the effects of the Hungarian occupation in 1939, including anti-Jewish regulations and a Jewish census in 1942; and continued Czech benevolence under Hungarian rule. She recounts the German occupation, during which she had to hide; the rumor-filled environment of Passover in 1944; the round-up of the town's Jews in a synagogue; and her deportation with her...

  8. Gustav R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Gustav R., who was born in Darmstadt, Germany in 1929. He speaks of his childhood in pre-war Germany; differences in the attitudes of his parents towards Judaism; the rise of Nazism in Germany; his father's arrest and imprisonment in Buchenwald in the wake of Kristallnacht; the difficulties encountered by his family in attempts to leave Germany; the family's eventual emigration to the United States after spending one and one-half years in Cuba; and the influences his wartime experiences had on his later life, particularly on his relationship with his children.

  9. Eva B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva B., who was born in Prague. She describes German and Czech nationalism in prewar Prague; the German occupation of Prague; conditions and experiences in Theresienstadt, where she and her mother remained for two years, and in Auschwitz and various German labor camps; and their liberation from Theresienstadt, to which they had been transported again shortly before the end of the war. Mrs. B. speaks of her boyfriend, who did not survive the war and whose loss she still mourns; the psychological coping mechanisms which aided her survival; postwar adjustment and effects...

  10. Paul D. edited testimony

    Illustrating his recollections with photographs, Paul D., a child survivor from Humenné, Slovakia, describes an early childhood full of love and warmth in spite of the death of his father when he was three years old. With evident pride in his own resourcefulness and that of the adults who cared for him, he relates his wartime experiences of flight, hiding, and living "on the Aryan side" in the manner of an adventure story, though it is told against the backdrop of the disappearances and deaths of family members - grandfather, favorite cousin, beloved stepfather - until only he and his mot...

  11. Ralph M. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Ralph M., who is a retired United States Army colonel. He recounts encountering Dachau during his unit's advance through Germany; the fatal wounding of a lieutenant in the fight for Dachau in April 1945; killing a number of Germans while entering Dachau; their complete lack of knowledge regarding concentration camps; encountering freight cars packed with corpses and a few living prisoners outside the camp; seeing crematoria with four ovens, basements full of stacked corpses, and the room where human medical experiments were conducted; arranging medical assistance for ...

  12. Lee R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Lee R., who was born in Olkusz, Poland, in 1905. He recalls his prewar life and speaks of the rise of antisemitism before the war. He relates his separation from his wife and small son when the Jewish men of Olkusz were sent to Katowice and from there to Siberia, where he remained from 1939 until 1945. He describes his return to Olkusz after the war, where he learned that the rumors of the murders of his wife and son were true; and he tells how, upon his return, he made arrangements for the restoration of the cemetery, which had been vandalized. Though he appears to b...

  13. Siegried K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Siegfried K., who was born in Danzig in 1930. He notes Danzig's unique place in Jewish history and speaks of his luxurious prewar life. He tells of the rise of Nazism and recalls shaking Hitler's hand during a visit to Berlin as a small child. The disturbances and attacks by the Brownshirts and his experiences with antisemitism, which continued in the United States, are also related. He describes his family's flight to England in 1938; the difficulty of leaving home and relatives, and, for him, leaving behind his beloved dog; the help given them by German non-Jews; hi...

  14. Saul C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Saul C., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1916, one of seven brothers. Mr. C. recalls his father giving his children religious freedom despite his own orthodoxy; playing soccer on a team of Jews and non-Jews; participation in Zionist youth organizations; attending Jewish and Polish schools; working in his brother's factory; organizing self-defense groups of young Jewish men to resist attacks by Polish antisemites; bringing food and clothes to relatives in Siedlce following a pogrom; German invasion; antisemitism of former Polish friends; ghettoization; building bunke...

  15. Sophie S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Sophie S., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1920. She recounts her family history; antisemitic incidents at school; her family's efforts to emigrate to the United States after German annexation; violence and terror during Kristallnacht; her father's arrest and incarceration in Dachau; emigration, with her younger brother, to the United States in 1938; her father's release; and her parents' arrival in 1939. Mrs. S. discusses the importance of an aunt in the United States to her family's ability to emigrate; the deaths of extended family members during the Holocaust; ...

  16. Raymond L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Raymond L., who was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1919. He recalls his training in the United States Army; advancing through France and Germany with the Sixth Armored Division; learning that a prisoner-of-war camp was found; seeing living "skeletons" in stripped clothes on an ambulence when passing the camp; learning the camp was for civilians; the revolting smell in the 'living quarters' when he revisited the camp; and his trauma upon seeing a room full of children's shoes, the crematoria, and human ashes. Mr. L. notes he had no prior knowledge of what he encountere...

  17. John L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of John L., who was born in 1925 and served with the United States Army 45th Infantry Division in World War II. He recalls participating in several major battles; approaching Dachau on April 29, 1945; railroad cars overflowing with emaciated corpses outside the camp; the soldiers' responses, including silence, disbelief, tears, and anger; capturing Wehrmacht and SS troops; observing inmates killing German guards; "ghostlike" inmates emerging from barracks; piles of dead bodies; the sickening stench; and advancing toward Munich the next day. Mr. L. notes he was totally un...

  18. Testimony excerpts - bystander and two survivors

    An edited program with excerpts from three testimonies. John S., a Jesuit priest, who during the war was a seminarian in Hungarian-occupied Košice, now Slovakia, vividly describes two personal encounters with the suffering and horrors of the Holocaust and laments his inability to intervene or protest on behalf of the victims. Leon S., a Jew from Poland, describes the liquidation of the Jews of his town, including the murder of his grandmother, which he witnessed. He speaks of his experiences in slave labor and concentration camps and tells how he was able to retain his faith and humanity ...

  19. Berta C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Berta C., who was born in approximately 1924 and raised in Mšeno, Czechoslovakia by her ethnic German mother and grandfather. She recalls her grandfather's death when she was seven; her mother's death in approximately 1938; renting most of her house to a German family; working for institutions which cared for German women, children, and wounded soldiers; imprisonment of her aunt's son while in the German military because he criticized Hitler; after the war, as a German who remained in Czechoslovakia, being required to watch films of concentration camps, of which she...

  20. Frank S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Frank S., who was born in Breslau, Germany, in 1921. He describes his childhood in Breslau and the changes which he experienced, particularly in school after 1933. He also details his apprenticeship, at the age of fifteen, to a Nazi electrician; the experience of Kristallnacht, during which he was protected by his gentile cleaning lady; his emigration to England in 1938, where he, a German citizen, was confined as an enemy alien after the outbreak of the war; and the effect of these experiences on his personality.