Greta Z. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Greta Z., who was born in Bielefeld, Germany in 1927. She recounts her family's long history in Germany; her father's World War I service; attending Catholic school; the burning of their synagogue on Kristallnacht; expulsion from school the next day; attending a Jewish school; being shunned by former friends; assistance from her former teachers; her father's four week incarceration; she and her brother refusing to go on a children's transport, not wanting to leave their parents; a deportation notice in November 1941; her father refusing offers from non-Jewish friends to get them out due to his faith in the German government; train deportation to the Ri?ga ghetto; realizing the German intent to kill them; briefly attending school; forced labor; smuggling food to her family; her father's death in August 1943; planting a garden; her wonderful relationship with Polish Jews; transfer to Stutthof in 1944; separation from her brother (he did not survive); escaping a selection to be with her mother; their transfer to Sophienwalde in September; slave labor doing construction; transfer to another camp in February; a death march a month later; liberation by Soviet troops; walking to Lo?hnberg; a seder organized by a Soviet-Jewish soldier; their hospitalization until spring; traveling to Stettin, Berlin, Hannover, then Beilefeld; the mayor's wonderful treatment; contacting her former teacher; and emigrating to the United States four years later due to pervasive painful memories. Ms. Z. reflects on the importance of being with her mother to her survival; difficulty remembering details due to her total focus on survival in the ghetto and camps; and guilt about not sharing her story more often since so few German concentration camp prisoners survived. She shows photographs.

2 videocassettes