Ala D. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Ala D., who was born in Będzin, Poland in approximately 1931, one of eight children. She recounts her family's orthodoxy; German invasion; her brother's deportation in 1940; one sister never returning when she went to the bakery; another sister's deportation in 1941; arrest when she went to get food for her family; deportation to Sosnowiec, then another labor camp; slave labor in a weaving factory and on railways; losing three teeth when beaten by a guard; being injured when a train hit her work group (almost all were killed); transfer to Gross-Rosen, then Parschnitz; digging graves; losing faith in God; fellow prisoners sharing soup; liberation by Soviet troops; assistance from the Red Cross; hospitalization for six months; reunion with a sister; living with her in Stuttgart; re-hospitalization; her sister's emigration to the United States; assistance from UNRRA; another sister sending packages from Sweden; marriage to a survivor in 1947; moving to Garmisch-Partenkirchen; regaining her belief in God after her son's birth in 1948; emigration to the United States in 1949; the births of two more children; and her husband's murder in a robbery. Ms. D. attributes her survival to her hope of seeing her family again, and discusses nightmares resulting from her experiences.

1 videocassette