Irena D. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Irena D., who was born in Warsaw, Poland. She describes her family; religious life in prewar Warsaw; her ambivalence toward Judaism and Christianity; German invasion; her father's unsuccessful attempt to flee; living with her family in the Warsaw ghetto; starvation; her father arranging for her, her mother, and sister to escape; using false papers to hide with a Polish woman; working as a Polish maid; learning of the ghetto uprising and her father's death; participating in the 1944 Warsaw uprising; deportation as a non-Jew to Pruszko?w; meeting her aunt; working in a chemical factory in Tempelhof; the bombings of Berlin; liberation by Soviet troops; returning to Warsaw; locating her mother and sister; living in the refugee camp in Bindermichl; and emigration with her mother and sister to the United States. Mrs. D. discusses her identity in terms of religion and her reluctance to talk with her daughters about her experiences.
Extent and Medium
3 videocassettes (3/4" u-matic)
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. Excerpts from this testimony cannot be used for publication without the donor's prior permission until 2017.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- D., Irena.
Subjects
- Sisters.
- Identification (Religion)
- Jews -- Poland -- Warsaw.
- Mothers and daughters.
- Forced labor.
- Jewish ghettos.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Escapes.
- Postwar effects.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Hiding.
- Postwar experiences.
- Refugee camps.
- False papers.
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Women.
Places
- Poland.
- Tempelhof (Germany : Concentration camp)
- Bindermichl (Austria : Refugee camp)
- Warsaw ghetto.
- PruszkoĚw (WojewoĚdztwo Mazowieckie, Poland)
- Warsaw (Poland) -- History -- Uprising, 1944.
- Warsaw (Poland)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat