Irma M. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Irma M., who was born in Forchheim, Germany in 1925, an only child. She recalls her family's affluence; attending Catholic school; her sense of isolation, despite kindness from nuns; wanting to be part of the pervasive Nazi youth culture; living with an aunt in Bamberg; attending a Jewish boarding school in Horburg; being forced to break the school windows and march through town to have rocks thrown at them during Kristallnacht; returning home; finding her home vandalized and her father gone (he was in Dachau); their non-Jewish maid and doctor assisting them; her father's return in December, a "broken man"; living with her maternal grandmother in Emmendingen; joining a kindertransport to Basel in March 1939; living with a foster family; sexual harassment by the father; requesting a transfer from HIAS in Zurich; learning her parents had arrived in the United States; living in an immigrant center for six months; traveling to the United States via Lisbon in August 1940; living with relatives, then her parents; their poverty; attending high school and college; marriage in 1948; her daughter's birth in 1955; and divorce in 1977. Ms. M. discusses nightmares before and after visiting Germany in 1959. She shows photographs and documents.
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
- M., Irma, -- 1925-
Corporate Bodies
- HIAS (Agency)
Subjects
- Child survivors.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Crystal Night, 1938.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Postwar experiences.
- Postwar effects.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Video tapes.
- Women.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Jews -- Rescue.
- Foster parents.
- Rape.
- Nightmares.
- Kristallnacht, 1938.
- Kindertransports (Rescue operations)
- Jews -- Migrations.
- Jewish refugees.
Places
- Lisbon (Portugal)
- Germany.
- Forchheim (Oberfranken, Germany)
- Bamberg (Germany)
- Horburg (Germany)
- Emmendingen (Germany)
- Basel (Switzerland)
- Zurich (Switzerland)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat