Ruth F. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Ruth F., who was born in Altona (Hamburg), Germany in 1926, the youngest of three children. She recounts attending a Jewish school; antisemitic harassment; her sisters' emigration to Palestine; the milkman warning them of a round-up of Polish Jews (her mother was from Galicia); Kristallnacht; being shunned by former non-Jewish friends; her father leaving for Budapest in June 1939 (he was a Hungarian citizen); joining him in Budapest via Vienna; assistance from the Jewish community which supplied her with tutors; working in a factory; German invasion in March 1944; ghettoization; escaping from a round-up; hiding with a friend, then in a vacant apartment; paying a non-Jewish policeman to smuggle her back to the ghetto; severe hunger; obtaining soup from the Red Cross; her father's death in a Soviet bombardment; liberation by Soviet troops in January 1945; moving to Enns, then Salzberg; working at displaced persons camps; moving to Antwerp; illegal emigration to Palestine from France in April 1947; interception by the British; incarceration on Cyprus; marriage; her daughter's birth; arriving in Israel in January 1949; she and her mother visiting relatives in Frankfurt in 1958; encountering former neighbors in Hamburg; assisting her mother obtain restitution; her death in 1959; divorce and remarriage; emigration to the United States; and hatred of Germans resulting from her losses and experiences. She shows photographs and a dreidel her father carved.
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
- F., Ruth, -- 1926-
Corporate Bodies
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
Subjects
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Hiding.
- Mutual aid.
- Postwar experiences.
- Kristallnacht, 1938.
- Jewish ghettos.
- Jews -- Hungary -- Budapest.
- Escapes.
- Refugee camps.
- Child survivors.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Crystal Night, 1938.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Video tapes.
- Women.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
Places
- Budapest ghetto.
- Salzburg (Austria)
- Budapest (Hungary)
- Frankfurt am Main (Germany)
- Enns (Austria)
- France.
- Antwerp (Belgium)
- Cyprus.
- Palestine -- Emigration and immigration.
- Germany.
- Hamburg-Altona (Hamburg, Germany)
- Vienna (Austria)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat