Eva S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Eva S., who was born in the Piotrko?w Trybunalski ghetto in 1940. She recounts her mother's death when she was seven months old; her aunt smuggling her and a younger cousin (Naomi) out of the ghetto; placement with a Polish woman in Warsaw, who then left her on a doorstep in a suburb; the woman of the house accepting her as her own; being baptized; attending Mass weekly; her aunt claiming her after the war; her "mother's" refusal to give her up and her own desire to remain; her aunt's legal action leading to her "mother's" acquiescence; moving with her aunt, her husband, and Naomi to displaced persons camps in Berlin, then Zeilsheim; moving to Frankfurt; adoption by her aunt and uncle (her aunt had two biological children after that); attending a convent school in Ko?nigstein; moving to New York City in 1952, then to Canada for a year; returning to Germany; attending boarding schools in Hove, England and Switzerland; attending university in the United States; marriage to an American in 1961; traveling to Poland with her husband and children in 1976; and finding her "mother", the Polish woman with whom she lived during the war. Ms. S. discusses the trauma of leaving her "mother"; her confused religious identity; gratitude that her aunt and uncle treated her so well; and shame resulting in not sharing her story when she was young. She shows photographs and documents.

2 videocassettes