Ursula M. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Ursula M., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1918 to a Jewish-Romanian father and a Christian mother who had converted to Judaism. She recounts attending school; expulsion of the Jews after Hitler's ascent to power and issuance of racial laws; remaining because she was a foreign national and child of a German non-Jew; her mother's refusal to divorce her father in order to attain "Aryan" status; her future husband's emigration in 1937; hiding Jews in their home during Kristallnacht; her parents' emigration to England in May 1939 (she was to follow shortly); her father ordering her to visit relatives in Bucharest in late August, thus escaping prior to the war; her father's visit; their inability to leave after the United States entered the war, despite her fiance? sending documents for the United States; teaching English; Allied bombings; communicating with her mother and future husband through the Red Cross; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to Prague in August 1946; assistance from HIAS; living in London with her mother for three months; emigration to join her fiance? in the United States in 1947; marriage; the births of two children; her husband's death thirteen years later; and remarriage. Ms. M. notes learning about the Holocaust in Prague after the war, and visiting her aunt in Germany in the 1960s.
Extent and Medium
2 videocassettes
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.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- M., Ursula, -- 1918-
Corporate Bodies
- HIAS (Agency)
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
Subjects
- Postwar experiences.
- Crystal Night, 1938.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- Children of interfaith marriage.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Video tapes.
- Women.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Fathers and daughters.
- Child survivors.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Nuremberg laws.
- Jews -- Migrations.
- Jewish refugees.
- Kristallnacht, 1938.
- Jews -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Germany.
Places
- Bucharest (Romania)
- Berlin (Germany)
- London (England)
- Prague (Czech Republic)
- Germany.
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat