Edith K. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Edith K., who was born in 1929, in Va?c, Hungary, the oldest of four children. She recalls a close and large extended family; pervasive antisemitism; her family's orthodoxy; Austrian cousins arriving after Kristallnacht; uncles serving in Hungarian slave labor battalions; hiding Czech cousins; her uncles' return in early 1944; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; removal of all men for slave labor; receiving letters from her father (she still has some); forced relocation to a brick factory in Monor; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation from her mother and siblings; others "mothering" her since she was the youngest; bonding with a cousin and four other girls; playing word games and talking about food; brief hospitalization; cousins bringing her food and clothing; re-hospitalization; selection for gassing by Josef Mengele; a cousin, who was a physician, obtaining her release from Mengele; selection for gassing in October; her group not being gassed due to the Sonderkommando revolt; celebrating Hanukkah with her cousins; a death march and train transport to Ravensbru?ck in January; hospitalization; amputation of her toes; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to Prague with others from her town; Red Cross assistance; hospitalization for tuberculosis; learning her father had perished; joining relatives in Bratislava, then Budapest; assistance from the Joint; emigration to join an aunt in London; treatment in a sanitarium in Davos; returning to London in April 1948; marriage in 1954; and raising four children.
Extent and Medium
3 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony can only be viewed at Yale University
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. This testimony can only be used for education and/or research.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- Mengele, Josef, -- 1911-1979.
- K., Edith, -- 1929-
Corporate Bodies
- RavensbruĚck (Concentration camp)
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Postwar experiences.
- Postwar effects.
- Concentration camps -- Revolts.
- Hospitals in concentration camps.
- Death marches.
- Concentration camp inmates -- Religious life.
- Forced labor.
- Concentration camp inmates -- Family relationships.
- Mutual aid.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Child survivors.
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Video tapes.
- Women.
- Holocaust survivors.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
Places
- London (England)
- Davos (Switzerland)
- Monor (Hungary)
- Prague (Czech Republic)
- Bratislava (Slovakia)
- Budapest (Hungary)
- Hungary.
- VaĚc (Hungary)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat