Sonia G. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape of Sonia G., who was born in ?ocho?w, Poland in 1912, one of ten children. She recalls working in Warsaw starting at age fifteen; moving to a hakhsharat from 1932 to 1933 to prepare for immigration to Palestine; increasing antisemitism; returning to ?ocho?w; emigrating to Brussels in 1938 (she never saw her family again); joining a Jewish socialist organization; a mock marriage to obtain Belgian citizenship; joining the Resistance; arrest; incarceration at Malines; deportation to Birkenau; useless slave labor; transfer to Canada Kommando; slashing clothing she sorted; close bonds with a group of Belgians; smuggling clothes to friends; the Sonderkommando revolt; a woman giving birth (the baby was killed to save everyone); public hanging of four women who stole explosives; the death march to Leipzig, Malchow, Ravensbru?ck, and Bunzlau; assistance from friends when she had typhus; obtaining extra food doing farm work and from Red Cross packages; being saved from execution by a guard; liberation by Soviets troops; recuperating in a Red Cross camp; repatriation to Lie?ge and Brussels; and meeting her future husband. Mrs. G. discusses group solidarity and its importance to survival; feeling she had lost everything; sharing her experience with her son; and difficulty believing it happened. She shows photographs.
Extent and Medium
4 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
- G., Sonia, -- 1912-
Corporate Bodies
- Malines (Concentration camp)
- Ḥevrat "Hakhsharat ha-yishuv" (Palestine)
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
- Ravensbrück (Concentration camp)
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
- Malchow (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Death marches.
- Refugees, Jewish.
- Sabotage.
- Zionist organizations.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Atrocities.
- False papers.
- Childbirth in concentration camps.
- Concentration camps -- Revolts.
- Resistance.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Mutual aid.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Women.
- Video tapes.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Forced labor.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Belgium.
- Jews -- Migrations.
- Friendship.
Places
- Łochów (Poland)
- Liège (Belgium)
- Brussels (Belgium)
- Warsaw (Poland)
- Poland.
- Leipzig (Germany : Concentration camp)
- Bunzlau (Poland : Concentration camp)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat