Willi F. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3389) [videorecording] / interviewed by Cathy S. Gelbin and Eva Lezzi, October 2, 1995 and March 28, 1996.

Potsdam, Germany : Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum für europäisch-jüdische Studien, Universität Potsdam, 1996.

2 videorecordings (39 min. and 1 hr., 10 min.) : col.

German

This testimony is in German.

Videotape testimony of Willi F., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1923 to a Jewish father and Catholic mother. He recounts the excitement of Nazi rallies; learning his father was Jewish (though he had converted to Catholicism) in 1932 when he was harassed at school; anti-Jewish laws barring him from an apprenticeship; working for a Communist Party member; the impact of anti-Jewish laws increasing after Kristallnacht; forced labor in a munitions factory; sabotaging his work; traveling to Konstanz, planning to enter Switzerland illegally; a guard accosting him; traveling to Lustenau to enter there; arrest while trying to cross the border; six weeks of interrogation in Feldkirch; six-month imprisonment in Graz; traveling to Friedrichshafen, then back to Berlin; forced labor removing Allied bombing rubble; transfer to Auschwitz; slave labor at Buna-Monowitz; and transfer to Dora. Mr. F. discusses convincing a prisoner to eat soup even if it was not kosher; beatings in Auschwitz and Dora; losing hope of surviving; camp guards purposely setting German and "foreign" Jews against each other; reluctance to share his story; and his wife and children understanding him better after watching his first testimony.

June 01, 2002

Willi F. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3135). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Willi F. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3135). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)