Helen S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Helen S., who was born in Be?dzin, Poland in 1920, the youngest of three children. She recounts her family's orthodoxy and affluence; attending Hebrew school; German invasion; fleeing to Olkusz; Germans arresting her father, uncle, and brothers; traveling to Kielce to obtain their release; returning home; marriage; her father and one brother working for the Judenrat; ghettoization; having an abortion; hiding with her family and others in a bunker during a round-up in August 1943; their discovery; deportation to Birkenau; separation with her sister-in-law from her parents and husband; her sister-in-law caring for her; their hospitalization for typhus (her sister-in-law died); a Slovak prisoner giving her extra food and hiding her during work; hospitalization for frostbite; transfer to Canada Kommando; a futile attempt to hide a baby; passing found valuables to the underground; the uprising in October; transfer to Auschwitz; a death march and train transfer to Ravensbru?ck, then Zwodau; posing as non-Jews with five other Jewish women; their denouncement; confinement in a cellar with no food; liberation by United States troops; transport to Paris; contact with her husband, who was in England; emigration to join him; the births of two sons; and her husband's death. Ms. S. discusses having her tattoo removed; a headmaster refusing admission to her son because they are Jewish; a painful visit to Auschwitz and Bedzin; and her strong faith and Jewish identity, despite not being religious. She shows photographs, documents, and a belt she found in Auschwitz.

3 videocassettes