Ann R. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Ann R., who was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1929. She recalls early happy memories; German bombardment; wearing the yellow star; expulsion from school; watching the Gestapo round-up her parents; and their wanton destruction, including the "evisceration" of a doll. She remembers informing the sanitarium where her brother was hospitalized that her parents had been taken away (they would not keep him anymore since there was no one to pay); giving him to a strange woman; wandering the streets with her sister; a nun offering to help them; moving many times; a visit from her father's friend, a baroness; being taken to a convent by the baroness's servant; and three years there with fifty other Jewish children. She describes the cloister, whose goal was to train maids; her sister's decision to be "deaf and dumb" in order to survive; a nun who allowed the Jewish children to gather and teach each other Yiddish; her idea to recite 999 perfect rosaries so her parents would come back; and realizing at 998 that they would not return. She tells of liberation; placement in an orphanage; emigration to the United States in 1948; and the careers and children of her and her siblings.

1 videocassette (3/4" u-matic)