Sally P. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Sally P., who was born in approximately 1920 and raised in P?on?sk, Poland. She recalls her large, extended family; antisemitic harassment; German invasion; her parents fleeing to Warsaw; selling their goods to support her brothers; her mother's return; ghettoization; public hangings; emotional devastation from observing her family's suffering, particularly hunger; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation from her family (she never saw them again); transfer to Budy, then back to Auschwitz/Birkenau; finding her friends; slave labor clearing bombing rubble and in a munitions factory; mud and rats leading to diseases; assignment to the hospital; observing Josef Mengele conducting "medical experiments"; sorting clothing of murdered Jews; the Sonderkommando uprising; a death march and train transport to Ravensbru?ck in January 1945; transfer to Malchow, then Torgau; liberation from a death march by United States troops in Grimma; hospitalization; finding two friends; transfer to Bayreuth displaced persons camp; thinking of suicide, upon realizing her entire family was killed; emigration to the United States; and a nervous breakdown due to her experiences. Ms. P. discusses her conviction that she would not survive the camps; wonder that she did; and pervasive, painful memories.
Extent and Medium
2 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony is open with permission.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- Mengele, Josef, -- 1911-1979.
- P., Sally, -- 1920?-
Corporate Bodies
- Malchow (Concentration camp)
- Ravensbrück (Concentration camp)
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Atrocities.
- Jews -- Poland -- Płońsk.
- Jewish ghettos.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Death marches.
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Human experimentation in medicine.
- Forced labor.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Women.
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Refugee camps.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Hospitals in concentration camps.
- Concentration camps -- Revolts.
- Postwar effects.
- Postwar experiences.
Places
- Płońsk (Poland)
- Grimma (Germany)
- Płońsk ghetto.
- Budy (Poland : Concentration camp)
- Torgau (Germany : Concentration camp)
- Bayreuth (Germany : Refugee camps)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat