Mira R. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Mira R., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1931. She recounts her family's relative affluence; antisemitic harassment; German invasion; her father and brother fleeing east; not being able to join them because she was ill; their return; ghettoization; a round-up on August 14, 1942; her mother sending her to the infirmary at the Umschlagplatz, thinking she could escape; later going to her father's workplace; finding him (her mother and brother were deported to Treblinka); her father arranging several futile attempts to hide her with non-Jews outside the ghetto; hiding during round-ups; a successful escape in April 1943 with assistance from a non-Jewish family friend; observing the ghetto burning during the uprising; hiding with her father in a barn in Wawer; occasionally leaving to obtain food and money; arrest during a foray; placement in a camp; protection by a Polish noble woman; escaping with her to Praga; liberation by Soviet troops in September 1944; joining her father in Otwock; testifying for the noble woman when she was accused of Nazi collaboration; living with her father in Lublin and ?o?dz?; and joining relatives in Paris in 1946. Ms. R. discusses her postwar mental illnesses; becoming an adult without ever being an adolescent; conversations with God during the war and less now; and the impossibility of really conveying her experiences. She shows photographs.

2 videocassettes