Allegra and Henry A. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Allegra A., who was born in Salonika, Greece in 1910, and her husband Henry, who joins her for the last half hour. She recounts her youth as the oldest of seven children in an observant family; education in a French Jewish school; apprenticing as a seamstress; working in her family's textile dyeing plant; her arranged courtship and marriage; extensive volunteer work for the Jewish National Fund; the birth of her son in 1939; and escaping Italian air raids in 1940. She recalls the arrival of German troops; anti-Jewish measures; persuading her husband not to register for forced labor; going into hiding with him and her son; using a Christian name to obtain false papers; attending Greek Orthodox services; and posing as an Albanian relative of one of her protectors. Mrs. A. describes her dreams which presaged wartime experiences; visiting a fortune teller who foretold the deaths of deported relatives; interceding with the postwar authorities for one of her protectors who had been arrested as a "collaborator"; and reclaiming her family's business after the war.
Extent and Medium
2 videocassettes (3/4" u-matic)
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony is open with permission.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive. This testimony may not be used without prior consent of the donors or their son until 2000.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- A., Allegra, -- 1910-
- A., Henry, -- 1910-
Corporate Bodies
- Jewish National Fund.
Subjects
- False papers.
- Hiding.
- Family.
- Dreams.
- Jewish marriage customs and rites.
- Mate selection -- Religious aspects -- Judaism.
- Husband and wife.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Jews -- Rescue.
- Jewish ghettos.
- Jews -- Greece -- ThessalonikeĚ.
- Forced labor.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Men.
- Women.
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
Places
- Salonika ghetto.
- Greece.
- ThessalonikeĚ (Greece)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- ftamc