Tonia B. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Tonia B., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1925. She recalls her family's Bundist activities; attending Bund and public schools; German invasion; ghettoization; food shortages; seeing her parents, brother, and sister for the last time when they were deported in 1940; a non-Jewish friend bringing food prior to the ghetto being sealed; nursing training; working in a hospital; visits from H?ayim Rumkowski; deportation of the children in 1942; the deaths of relatives from starvation; hospitalization when she was ill; other nurses sharing their food with her; friendship with Bluma, another nurse; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in August 1944; transfer a few weeks later to Freiberg; slave labor in a factory; reunion with Bluma; revival of hope when observing the bombing of Dresden; transfer to Mauthausen on open train cars; Czechs throwing bread to them; liberation by United States troops; antisemitic remarks by Soviets; returning to ?o?dz?; living in Landsberg displaced persons camp; Bluma's marriage; emigration to La Paz, Boliva via Paris with Bluma, her husband, and daughter; moving to Rio de Janiero to join a cousin; emigrating to the United States; and marriage in 1954. Ms. B. discusses Bluma's suicide in Israel and visiting the camps with her husband and sons in 1980. She shows photographs.
Extent and Medium
5 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
- B., Tonia, -- 1925-
- Rumkowski, Mordecai Ḥayim.
Corporate Bodies
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- Landsberg am Lech (Displaced persons camp)
- Mauthausen (Concentration camp)
- Freiberg (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Women.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Friendship.
- Forced labor.
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Jewish ghettos.
- Jews -- Poland -- Łódź
- Antisemitism -- Postwar.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Postwar experiences.
- Mutual aid.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Child survivors.
Places
- Poland.
- Łódź (Poland)
- Dresden (Germany) -- History -- Bombardment, 1945.
- Paris (France)
- La Paz (Bolivia)
- Łódź ghetto
- Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat