Archival Descriptions

Displaying items 21 to 40 of 4,487
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  1. Doni and Anna S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Doni S., who was born in Minsk, Russia, in 1900, and moved to Poland after the Revolution, and his wife Anna S., who was born in 1915. Mrs. S. describes how they met and married; Mr. S. describes his untroubled prewar life in Poland. They tell of their transport as slave laborers, along with their two small children, to Luban; the murder of their eighteen year old daughter, who had remained with her grandmother; their flight to the forest; and their life in hiding there, where they lived for two years with their two surviving children. They note they were hiding with ...

  2. Rudy F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rudy F., who was born in Munka?cs, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine), in 1922, the older of two children. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; their affluence; attending a Czech, then a Hebrew school; belonging to Betar; his parents' many charitable acts; Hungarian occupation in 1938; antisemitism among his peers; the brutality of the Hungarian field police; draft with his uncle into a Hungarian slave labor battalion in 1942; assignments in Szombathely, Uz?h?horod, and other locations; working for Organisation Todt; transfer to Gunskirchen, then Mauthausen; death march...

  3. Shirley W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Shirley W., who was born in Poland circa 1924. She tells of the German occupation and describes the massacres of Jews which followed. Her mother, grandmother, and older sister were killed during this time. Mrs. W. explains that by hiding in a bunker, she, her father, and her younger sister were able to avoid deportation from the ghetto to which they were confined. She relates their experiences in hiding, first in the countryside surrounding the ghetto, and later in the forest where they lived with the partisans. Mrs. W. also mentions spending four years after the war ...

  4. Gregory F. Holocaust testimony

    Video testimony of Gregory F., a non-Jew, who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1941. He relates experiences as a "displaced person" in his own country when he and his family were relocated by the Germans from Vienna to a small Austrian town.

  5. Genia T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Genia T., who is from Chrzanów, Poland. She speaks of her life under German occupation, working as a forced laborer making buttons. She recounts the round-up, while she was away at work, of her husband, father, and siblings for deportation from the Chrzanów ghetto. Only her husband survived. Mrs. T. describes her transfer to a slave labor camp in Bernsdorf, Czechoslovakia, and details conditions there, where she remained as a worker in a mattress factory until her liberation by the Russians. She also mentions her return home after the war; her reunion with her husba...

  6. Michael R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Michael R., who was born in Da?browa Go?rnicza, Poland, circa 1928. He speaks of life in the community before the war; the effects of the German occupation; the dispersal and deaths of members of his family, while he and his brother tried to hide together; and his eventual arrest and torture in Katowice. He relates his deportation to Birkenau and vividly recalls conditions there, where he saw subjects of medical experiments, was hospitalized after contracting typhus, and, after his recovery, worked in the "Canada" Kommando. He remembers the camp orchestra as well as t...

  7. Eva K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva K., who was born in 1921 and lived in a town near Khust, Czechoslovakia. She tells of the Hungarian, then German occupation; the deportations and deaths of members of her family; and her own hiding, first on a farm, then with a friend of her father. She also speaks of her suicidal feelings during that time and of the difficulties she later encountered when she and her older sister went to Prague.

  8. Alex F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Alex F., who was born in Ladmovce, Czechoslovakia, in 1926. He describes the Hungarian occupation in 1938; being taken as a hostage by the Hungarian police in 1944; the relocation of the region's Jews to the ghetto in Sa?toraljau?jhely in the same year; his deportation to Birkenau, where he was separated from his parents; and his transfer to the labor camp of Auschwitz, where he worked making fertilizer. He relates his experience as an experimental subject in Auschwitz, after which he hid to escape a selection; the death march from Auschwitz to Breslau in January, 194...

  9. Eva S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva S., who was born in Berlin in 1922. She describes her childhood and youth in Nazi Germany, including particularly vivid memories of the day Hitler came to power, Kristallnacht, and her brother's bar mitzvah, which took place in the chapel of a Jewish old age home because all the synagogues had been destroyed. She also discusses her journey to England with a children's transport in 1939 and her life in England, where she remained for several years. She speaks of her sense of Jewishness, which she acquired in school rather than in her non-observant home, and of the ...

  10. 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.

  11. Betty C. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Betty C., who was born in Berlin in 1910. She tells of her happy life in prewar Berlin and describes the rise of antisemitism in Germany, culminating in Kristallnacht, after which she, her husband, and her infant daughter fled the country and emigrated to the United States.

  12. Newton S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Newton S., a non-Jew, who was an American soldier during World War II. He tells of his military training and preparations for combat in 1943-1944; his arrival in England and participation in the Battle of the Bulge; his experience in a POW camp near Hanover; his postwar stay in a French field camp, where he was helped by a doctor whom he met again years later in New Haven; and the difficulty of resistance in the camps.

  13. Elizabeth F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Elizabeth F., who was born in Czechoslovakia near the Hungarian border. She describes her family's life during the four years of Hungarian occupation; their evacuation to the ghetto at Sa?toraljau?jhely in the spring of 1944; and her deportation, along with her three sisters, to Auschwitz one month later. She tells how the four sisters, by helping each other, managed to survive the concentration and slave labor camps of Auschwitz, Weisswasser, Horneburg, and Bergen-Belsen.

  14. Rosalie W. and Jolly Z. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rosalie W. and her daughter Jolly Z., who was born in Uz?h?horod, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1926. They describe their happy, privileged prewar life; the emigration of Mrs. W.'s son to Palestine; the Hungarian occupation; the deterioration of conditions following the German occupation; their transfer to a brick factory in the ghetto (Mrs. Z. came out of hiding to join her parents there); and their evacuation and journey by cattle car to Auschwitz. They speak of their separation from Mrs. W.'s husband, whom they later realized was gassed upon arrival; their ...

  15. Zoltan G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Zoltan G., who was born circa 1925 and grew up in a town in eastern Slovakia. Mr. G. describes his childhood and religious upbringing; the Hungarian occupation; his move to Budapest, where he worked as a cabinet maker; being forced, with his family, to the Sa?toraljau?jhely ghetto in 1944; and their deportation to Auschwitz. He relates his experiences as a laborer on a farm near Birkenau, where he was the favorite of an SS man; the death march in 1945 from Auschwitz to Gleiwitz, then Buchenwald; his liberation by the Americans; and his physical recovery. He also refle...

  16. Celia K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Celia K., who was born in Szarkowszczyzna, a small town near Vilna, Poland, in 1923. In this extraordinarily detailed and vivid testimony, Mrs. K. describes her prewar education; the German occupation; the ghettoization of her town; and her work there as a waitress in the officers' dining hall. She tells of her transfer to the Glubokoye ghetto; being tortured for refusing to become the mistress of a Kommandant, and the psychological effects of this experience; assisting others to flee the ghetto; and her own escape, with the aid of a Polish farmer. She relates spendin...

  17. Leopold P. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Leopold P., who was born in Moravia, Czechoslovakia in 1923. As a non-Jew, he speaks of the arrest, imprisonment in concentration camps, and heroism of his father, who was active in the Resistance; of his own arrest and torture by the Germans; and of his subsequent involvement with the resistance movement. He also discusses his awareness of the situation of Jews in Nazi-dominated Czechoslovakia, and his experiences as a slave laborer. Mr. P. reflects, in his capacity as an anthropologist as well as an eyewitness, on the origins and implications of the Holocaust.

  18. Libby and Sidney G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Libby G., who was born in Prilesnoye (Manevichi), Ukraine, in 1933, and her husband, Sidney G., who was born in Chrzano?w, Poland, in 1927. Mrs. G. tells of the Russian and German occupations; her and her sister's flight into the woods prior to the town's ghettoization; and hiding with a family friend before joining the partisans. Mr. G. describes his childhood and religious upbringing; the German occupation; six months of forced labor in Langenbielau in 1939, after which he was sent home due to an injury; deportation to Gross-Rosen in 1943; the death march to Dachau ...

  19. Harry T. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Harry T., who was born in Giessen, Germany in 1921. Mr. T. describes growing up as the only Jewish boy in Zu?rbach, a farm village near Frankfurt; the rise of antisemitism and anti-Jewish activities; his training in Frankfurt to become a cabinetmaker; his return home after Kristallnacht; slave labor; and leaving his family in Frankfurt in 1941. He tells of his transport from Berlin to Barcelona, Spain; his imprisonment there and then in an internment camp near the French border; his release by the Quakers; and his emigration, via Portugal, to the United States. The ef...

  20. Martha K. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Martha K., who was born in Oradea, Romania, in 1922 and moved to Budapest, Hungary, at the age of three. She recalls her childhood in Budapest and growing up in two cultures in her family--Jewish and assimilated. She describes the worsening situation of the Jews beginning in 1938, when she had to leave the University of Budapest and learn a trade, and culminating in mass murders and deportations in 1944. Mrs. K. relates the fate of family members, many of whom were murdered in Auschwitz while others survived by living in "safe houses" or using false papers. She detail...