Lilly R. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Lilly R., who was born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia in 1924. She remembers a happy childhood; German occupation; antisemitic restrictions; living on a hachsharah (training farm) in Brno; her father and brother being rounded-up; returning to Ostrava; her father and brother returning; traveling to Prague to obtain documents for her father; studying at a Jewish school in Prague; returning to Ostrava; deportation to Theresienstadt; working in the gardens; smuggling food to her family; deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau with camp officials including Fredy Hirsch (her parents and brother remained); slave labor; helping a pregnant friend survive selection; transfer to Hamburg; cleaning bombing rubble; assignment to several camps including Neuengamme; she and a friend stealing food from German homes during air raids; an anti-Nazi couple helping them; transfer to Bergen-Belsen; liberation by British troops; hospitalization in Celle; meeting Marlene Dietrich; visiting Buchenwald; living in Bamberg displaced persons camp; learning from the Red Cross that her parents and brother had survived; joining them in Ostrava; recovering from tuberculosis; antisemitism; and emigration to the United States in December 1946 (her parents moved to Israel). Ms. R. discusses her state of mind in camps and the many friends and relatives who were killed. She shows photographs, documents, and artifacts.

3 videocassettes