Helene J. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Helene J., who was born in Poland in 1918, one of six children. She recounts being orphaned (she does not remember her parents); her grandmother from Paris retrieving them; childhood poverty; marriage at eighteen; her daughter's birth in 1937; briefly evacuating when invasion seemed imminent; staying with a friend outside of Paris; German invasion; her husband bringing them back to Paris; evacuating to Saint-Laurent-de-Neste; locals welcoming them and providing food and other support; her son's birth; registering as a Jew with the mayor and later regretting it; her husband's involvement with the underground; giving her children to the Red Cross to hide; finding them emaciated when she visited; taking them with her; a gendarme's wife warning them of a round-up; hiding with neighbors; another warning; her husband's escape to Spain; learning her sister, her husband, and child had been caught attempting to flee to Spain (her brother-in-law was shot, her sister and child deported and did not survive); walking from village to village in the Pyrenees with her two children; and friends from Saint-Laurent-de-Neste finding them and bringing them back at liberation.

1 videocassette