Vera B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Vera B., who was born in a small town in Slovakia in 1918. She relates moving to Mukachevo in 1924; a happy childhood; attending college in Brno; expulsion in 1939 due to German occupation; Hungarian occupation of Mukachevo; conscription of males into Hungarian labor battalions; German occupation in 1944; and formation of the ghetto. Mrs. B. describes four weeks in the ghetto; Hungarian cruelty toward the Jews; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her parents who were murdered immediately; her inability to mourn for them then; her strong will to survive; collecting corpses for transfer to D lager; supervising the children's block where they played and sang; the sudden disappearance of the approximately one thousand children; and learning they had been taken to the gas chamber. She recalls being saved by a kapo; transfer to Zittau, Germany to work in an airplane factory; more humane treatment there; liberation by Russians on May 5, 1945; traveling to Czechoslovakia and the kindness with which they were treated; return to Mukachevo; mourning, as she began to realize her losses; smuggling herself to Germany; three years in a displaced persons camp where she married; and emigration to the United States in 1949. Mrs. B. discusses her resolve never to be hungry again; her satisfaction with life; her daughter's emotional problems as a child of survivors; her nightmares; and the importance of remembering the Holocaust.

1 videocassette (3/4" u-matic)