Cecilia K. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Cecelia K., who was born in Yasinya, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1925, the youngest of six children. She describes her family's orthodoxy; attending public school; her father's death in 1936; membership in Hashomer Hatzair; a brother and sister emigrating to Palestine in 1939; Hungarian occupation; losing their citizenship; her mother's and sister's arrests; a family friend obtaining their release; her brother hiding her with her mother in Hor?ice for about eight months; moving to Nyi?regyha?za when her brother's arrest was imminent; working in a dental lab (the owner concealed their identities); her mother joining a sister in Khust; traveling to Budapest to join another sister; learning she was in jail in Serbia; visiting her; a lawyer in Subotica arranging her release; working in a dental lab in Budapest; becoming engaged; her boss's non-Jewish wife offering to hide her; traveling to Khust to join her family; ghettoization; assistance from the Joint; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; a prisoner suggesting her sister give her baby to her mother; separation from the men, her mother, and nephew; her sister realizing her child and mother had been killed; preventing her from committing suicide; their transfer to a children's barrack; being forced to watch a fatal beating; transfer to Nuremberg; slave labor in a munitions factory; transfer to Holleischen; liberation by partisans, then British troops; traveling with her sister to Prague; and reunion with her fiance?. Ms. K. discusses mentally composing poems in camps in order not to think; the importance to her survival of helping her sister; not sharing her story with her children; and writing poems about her experiences.

1 videocassette