Bertha L. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Bertha L., who was born in Czechoslovakia, one of seven children. She recounts her family's hasidism; cordial relations with non-Jews; living in Vys?na? Pisana?; attending schools in Niz?na? Pisana? and Svidni?k; anti-Jewish restrictions; expulsion from school; briefly moving to Kapis?ova?, then back to Vys?na? Pisana?; orders to report for forced labor in Stropkov; parting from her mother there; transfer to Poprad; deportation to Auschwitz in 1942; slave labor; transfer to Birkenau in August; receiving extra food for work loading corpses onto trucks; a friend convincing her not to commit suicide; briefly seeing her brother (he did not survive); sorting prisoners' luggage; finding her sister-in-law's suitcases; learning two sisters had been killed in Birkenau and her parents in Majdanek; transfer to Bergen-Belsen in October 1944; liberation by British troops in April 1945; reunion with a sister in a displaced persons camp; their journey to Prague, then Bratislava; learning one brother had survived as a partisan; assistance from the Joint; living with their brother in Banska? Bystrica; moving to Kos?ice; marriage to a survivor in 1947; her siblings' emigration to Israel; her daughter's birth; and joining her husband's relatives in the United States in 1949. Ms. L. discusses bringing her sister to the U.S.; not discussing her experiences with her children; recently lecturing students about her experiences; and traveling to concentration camps on organized student trips with two of her children. She shows photographs.

3 videocassettes