Olga L. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Olga L., who was born in Berehove, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in approximately 1919, one of seven children. She recalls festive holiday celebrations; antisemitic incidents; working in a law office; Hungarian occupation in 1938; anti-Jewish restrictions; helping one brother escape to Palestine; obtaining documents to emigrate to England; remaining with her parents so another brother could escape; her brother-in-law's murder while attempting to escape; her sister and niece moving in; her twin brothers' conscription into a Hungarian slave labor battalion; her father's arrest; her boss obtaining his release; her youngest brother's conscription; German occupation in March 1944; paying a non-Jew to hide her niece; ghettoization; a policeman bringing her niece to them; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her sister, niece, and parents (they were gassed); transfer to Peterswaldau; slave labor in a munitions factory; a severe beating; hospitalization; a kapo warning her to leave the hospital prior to a deportation; wanting to die; a friend switching jobs with her; liberation by Soviet troops in May 1945; briefly living in Reichenbach (presently Dzierz?onio?w, Poland); traveling to Bratislava, Budapest, then home; reunion with her youngest brother and boyfriend; marriage; illegally traveling to Prague, then Litome?r?ice in January 1946; her son's birth; and emigration to the United States in 1949. Ms. L. discusses lecturing about the Holocaust, but stopping when it became "commercialized." She shows a photograph.
Extent and Medium
3 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
- L., Olga, -- 1919?-
Corporate Bodies
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- Peterswaldau (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Jews -- Ukraine -- Berehove.
- Jewish ghettos.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Women.
- Video tapes.
- False papers.
- Mutual aid.
- Postwar experiences.
- Hungarian occupation.
- Forced labor.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
Places
- Budapest (Hungary)
- Prague (Czech Republic)
- Litoměřice (Czech Republic)
- Berehovo ghetto.
- Czechoslovakia.
- Berehove (Ukraine)
- Dzierżoniów (Poland)
- Bratislava (Slovakia)
- Berehovo (Czechoslovakia)
- Reichenbach (Breslau, Germany)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat