Cesia K. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Cesia K., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland to a middle-class family of four children. She recalls a sheltered childhood; German invasion; anti-Jewish measures; ghettoization; starvation, beatings, and forced labor; her impressions of H?ayim Rumkowski; her mother's escape with her nine-month-old sibling during a children's deportation; trying to help others through the sick committee; her father's deportation in August 1944 (she never saw him again); separation from her mother, brothers, and grandmother upon arrival at Auschwitz; transfer with her sister to Stutthof in November 1944; frequent killings on a death march in January 1945; escaping with her sister from a boat en route to Gdan?sk; walking to a labor camp for non-Jewish Slavs; her sister developing gangrene; liberation by Soviet troops; and returning to ?o?dz? in April 1945. Mrs. K. describes working to support her sister; learning that her brother was in Italy on his way to Palestine; marriage in December 1945; antisemitic incidents in 1946; and fleeing with her husband via Czechoslovakia to Germany. She discusses her continuing distrust of Poles and Germans and reluctance to visit either country.
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
- Rumkowski, Mordecai Ḥayim.
- K., Cesia.
Corporate Bodies
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- Stutthof (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Holocaust survivors.
- Video tapes.
- Sisters.
- Forced labor.
- Jews -- Poland -- Łódź.
- Jewish ghettos.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Women.
- Antisemitism -- Postwar.
- Postwar experiences.
- Mutual aid.
- Child survivors.
- Concentration camp inmates -- Escapes.
- Death marches.
Places
- Gdańsk (Poland)
- Łódź ghetto.
- Poland.
- Łódź (Poland)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat