Lauryann F. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Lauryann F., who was born in Strasbourg, France, in 1928, an only child. She recalls her family's orthodoxy; visits to Paris; moving to join her mother's family in Gyulaha?za, Hungary; an idyllic childhood; attending Catholic school; harassment by the Arrow Cross beginning in 1938; moving to IV. Keru?let, a Budapest suburb; German invasion in March 1944; forced relocation to Jewish-designated housing; attending a private art school; declining a rescue offer by a priest in order to remain with her parents; round-up to a brick factory; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her parents (she never saw them again); friendship with another girl, with whom she remained throughout the camps; the pervasive stench; transfer to Nuremberg; slave labor in a Siemens factory; Allied bombings; transfer to Czechoslovakia; liberation by Yugoslav partisans, then United States troops; her friend's death the next day; traveling to Budapest; the trauma of avoiding rape by Soviet soldiers en route; moving with a cousin to Ma?d; contact from her uncle in Paris through the Red Cross; joining him in 1946; attending art school; emigration to the United States in 1950; marriage; and the births of two daughters. Ms. F. discusses numbing herself and never making eye contact with camp officials as a survival strategy; not sharing her experiences, even with her husband and children; nightmares due to her experiences; validating that her experiences were true upon meeting a woman who had been in the same camps; and an emotional visit to her town in Hungary.

3 videocassettes