Archival Descriptions

Advanced query tips

There are several ways to be more specific in your search query:

"Phrase"
Search an exact match of your query, e.g. "Member lists"
+Phrase
Given word has to be in the result, e.g. +Gestapo
-Phrase
Exclude given word from search, e.g. -Gestapo

Use the following syntax to restrict the search to specific fields:

field:"phrase"
For instance, you can find all descriptions that have the phrase "Auschwitz Birkenau" in their titles by searching for title:"Auschwitz Birkenau".

The following fields are currently available:

  • identifier
  • title
  • creator
  • person
  • place
  • subject
  • address
Displaying items 81 to 100 of 4,487
Search result ordering
Language of Description: English
Holding Institution: Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

  1. Rene B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rene B., a Catholic, who was born in Namur, Belgium in 1905, the elder of two sons. He recounts his father being killed as a soldier in the First World War; living with his grandparents in Limal; graduating from military school in Namur in 1924 as a cavalry lieutenant; marriage in 1931; his daughter's birth; serving in Limbourg; German invasion; retreat, then capture by German forces; release; returning home; recruitment by the Belgian secret army; moving to Brussels; working for the Red Cross; recruiting demobilized Belgian soldiers for the secret army; arrest in Mar...

  2. Bella S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Bella S., who was born in Gross-Zimmern, near Darmstadt, in 1904. She recounts her upbringing in a religious, patriotic family (her youngest brother was killed in World War I); limited antisemitism ("it was a normal part of life"); the shock of her father's accidental death in 1917; and her marriage and move to Frankfurt in 1926. Mrs. S. describes deciding to place their daughter with non-Jews in Brussels; their failed attempts to leave for the United States in 1937-1938; her husband's emigration to the United States; her difficult life alone in Frankfurt; deportation...

  3. Helena V. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Helena V., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1924. She recalls her four siblings; deportation of foreign Jews beginning in 1940; marriage in 1941 (her mother thought she would be safer); her husband's draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion; her son's birth; living with her parents-in-law; losing contact with her parents and siblings; being forced to move to a Jewish designated house; being hidden by a non-Jewish woman; her father-in-law obtaining Vatican and Swedish papers; living in a safe house; remaining indoors for three months; lack of food and water; li...

  4. Irving D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Irving D., who was born in Beremyany, Ukraine in 1919. He recalls his family moving to Tluste (presently Tovste) in 1933 due to an antisemitic incident; joining his father's successful business; Soviet occupation in 1939; his draft into the Soviet army; posting to Afghanistan; hospitalization in Tashkent; returning to Tluste on June 19, 1941; German invasion on June 22, 1941; rejoining his unit in Ptoskurov(now Khmel?nyt?s??kyi?); traveling from Kiev to Ashkhabad in September; training in Petropavlovsk until 1944; transfer with his unit to Cheli?a?binsk, then Chebarku...

  5. Jean-Michel D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Jean-Michel D., who was born in Oran, Algeria and raised in Belgium. He recalls his parents' divorce (his mother was Catholic); a close relationship with his grandfather; working in Liège; marriage; imprisonment for resistance; escaping; he and his wife being sent for forced labor in Nuremberg; her release after two weeks (she was ill); going on leave (he never returned); his wife's death in 1942; living underground in Paris; arrest while trying to escape to England; imprisonment in St. Gilles; suffering greatly in solitary confinement; clandestinely sending a messa...

  6. Hilda G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Hilda G., who was born in 1925 in Berlin, Germany. She recalls moving to Amsterdam in 1928; German invasion in 1940; anti-Jewish restrictions; her brother hiding in Belgium; nurse's training in a children's center; helping the underground hide Jewish children; hiding to escape deportation; receiving a postcard her mother had thrown from a transport (she never saw her parents again); escaping with her brother via Maastricht to Brussels; posing as a non-Jewish nurse in the Ardennes, Gembloux, and Couvin; working for the resistance; her brother's arrest in 1944; moving w...

  7. Olga F. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Olga F., who was born in Lwo?w, Poland in 1925. She recalls her family's move to Czernowitz in 1927; increasing antisemitism; summer visits to relatives in Lwo?w; an influx of Jewish refugees after the German invasion of Poland; their inability to sense the imminent danger; Soviet occupation; deportation of property owners to Siberia; German invasion; destruction of Jewish property; ghettoization; deportation to Ataki, then Transnistria by Romanian forces; moving to Mogilev, then Derebchin; food shortages and overcrowding; being hidden by her mother to avoid forced la...

  8. Irene W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Irene W., who was born in Zawiercie, Poland in 1925, one of six children. She recounts her father's death in 1936; moving to Warsaw to join two older siblings living with relatives; German invasion; anti-Jewish violence; ghettoization; her older brother leaving for home; being smuggled out by non-Jews from Zawiercie; traveling to Wolbrom, then Pilica; living with her uncle and grandfather; smuggling herself with a cousin to Zawiercie; difficulties obtaining food since she was not registered; deportation with other girls to Sosnowiec, then Gabersdorf in February 1942; ...

  9. 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...

  10. Victoria B. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Victoria B., who was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1927. She recalls a peaceful life in a large, extended Turkish family in Antwerp; German occupation in 1940; fleeing with her family via De Panne to Marseille; her father's return to Antwerp to oversee his business; attending school in Marseille; returning to Antwerp; obtaining protection from the Turkish government to temporarily escape deportation; hiding in a convent in La Hulpe; returning to Antwerp; hiding in a castle in Les Avins-en-Condroz (she was given false papers), then with her English teacher in Antwerp; tr...

  11. Eva E. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Eva E., who was born in a small town in Poland in 1912, one of fourteen children. She recalls one brother had fifteen children; moving to Warsaw; marriage at age sixteen or seventeen; the births of a son and two daughters; ghettoization; her children and mother-in-law being taken from hiding in 1942 (she never saw them again); hiding in a bunker with her husband; separation from him when they were found (she never saw him again); deportation to Majdanek; slave labor carrying stones; working with her husband's sister; her disappearance; transfer to Auschwitz; finding t...

  12. Irene G. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Irene G., who was born in Kuchava, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1929, the youngest of eight children. She recounts her father died when she was an infant; attending school and synagogue in Kuz?mino; Hungarian occupation; living with her married sister in order to attend school in Mukacheve; German occupation in spring 1944; returning home with her sister; one brother hiding with assistance from non-Jews; forced relocation to Kal?nik, then the Munka?cs ghetto in April; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau two weeks later; separation with her four sisters from the...

  13. Akiva N. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Akiva N., who was born in Polhora, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1922, the older of two children. He recounts his family moving to Turany when he was three; attending a Catholic school for three years; moving to Žilina; attending a Jewish school; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; cordial relations with non-Jews; completing high school; working for Hashomer in Piešt̕any and Trenčin; expulsion of Jews from schools; starting a Jewish school; moving to Banská Bystrica in 1942 to teach and lead Hashomer; arranging to be smuggled to Hungary to avoid deportatio...

  14. Rochelle S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Rochelle S., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1922. She recalls pervasive antisemitism; Soviet occupation in 1939; German invasion in June 1941; ghettoization; receiving work cards (her father worked for the Judenrat); her mother's death; liquidation of the ghetto in 1943; deportation with her sister to Kaiserwald; transfer to Stutthof a year later; her sister and she caring for each other when they were sick; a death march in winter 1944/1945; liberation from a barn; recovering in a German village for six months; beginning a trip home with her sister; remaining in Bi...

  15. Irene W. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Irene W., who was born in Kobern, Germany in 1921. She recalls feeling secure and respected in the German community; her father's arrest during Kristallnacht; working as a nurse's aide in a Jewish hospital in Cologne; anti-Jewish regulations; sending packages to her parents who were deported to Lublin in March 1942; forced relocation of the hospital into a fortress on the outskirts of Cologne; deportation with about fifty Jews on a passenger train to Terezi?n in 1943; working in a hospital; assistance from her boyfriend's family; transport to Auschwitz; praying during...

  16. Peter L. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Peter L., who was born in Jihlava, Czechoslovakia in 1924, the second of two children. He recounts his assimilated family; attending a German school; his bar mitzvah but not in a synagogue (his father was an atheist); leaving school due to antisemitic harassment; learning to be a machinist; attending a Zionist school in Prague; living in an orphanage, then a Zionist dormitory; his school's closure; joining his family in the Třebíč ghetto; forced labor with his father in a nearby quarry; deportation with his family to Theresienstadt in May 1942; contacts with Fredy ...

  17. Fridrich D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Fridrich D., who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1919. He recalls attending Jewish elementary school; completing high school in 1937; participating in a communist youth group; joining the party in 1937; imprisonment for distributing flyers; release conditional upon leaving Bratislava; moving to Nitra; being drafted for forced labor in the Slovak Sixth Brigade; postings in Brezno and Liptovský Svätý Peter; release two years later in February 1942; returning to Nitra; receiving a notice to report to the authorities; hiding; arrest; depo...

  18. Shimon S. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Shimon S., who was born in 1930 in Łódź, Poland. He recounts ghettoization; his father's fatal shooting; pervasive hunger; stealing food and coal with an organized group of children; deportation to Chelmno; observing Kommandant Hans Bothmann randomly murder Jews for "entertainment"; his assignment with Walther Burmeister to remove gold teeth and valuables from corpses after gassings; finding his mother's purse among the valuables; a visit by Hans Biebow; Burmeister protecting him from selections; a mass execution in retaliation for an escape; taking and sharing food...

  19. Peretz R. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Peretz R., who was born in Holíč, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy(presently Slovakia) in 1916, one of three brothers. He recalls his father's Jewish and secular leadership roles; attending school in Bratislava, then Skalica; joining Maccabi; attending medical school in 1934; leaving in 1938 due to antisemitism; attending Gordonyah training in Bánovce; marriage in 1940; continuing his youth movement work in Bratislava; one-month incarceration in a work camp in Humenné; arrest and escape; his parents going into hiding; he and his wife traveling illegally to Budapest; conf...

  20. Benjamin D. Holocaust testimony

    Videotape testimony of Benjamin D., who was born in Vilna, Poland, in 1914. He tells of studying fine arts; conscription into the Polish army; antisemitism in the military; Soviet occupation; imprisonment by the Soviets; escape; hiding in Dubno; returning to Vilna; marriage in 1939; brief service in the Soviet army; German invasion; an unsuccessful attempt to escape; formation of the Judenrat; the murder of its members; and appointment of another one. Mr. D. describes mass killings in Ponary; hiding with his wife; ghettoization; working as an artist; the killing of his grandfather and other...