Zipora V. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Zipora V., who was born in Sátoraljaújhely, Hungary in 1928, the youngest of seven children. She recounts her family's orthodoxy; anti-Jewish restrictions; draft of two brothers into Hungarian slave labor battalions; learning one was killed; German invasion in March 1944; ghettoization; round-up with her family; the escape of two sisters; deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau; separation from her parents; slave labor with her sister sorting deportees' belongings; burying jewelry she found as an act of sabotage; being beaten for throwing food over a fence to a cousin; transfer to a weaving factory; praying on Rosh ha-Shanah and fasting on Yom Kippur; her sister's deteriorating condition; assistance from her "Lagerschwester"; her sister's hospitalization (she never saw her again); hearing an explosion (a prisoner revolt); public hanging of a women involved; a French prisoner giving her bread at the start of a death march and train transport to Ravensbrück; transfer three weeks later to Neustadt-Glewe; slave labor digging trenches; receiving a Red Cross package; abandonment by German guards; arrival of United States, then Soviet troops; traveling with sixteen others to Prenzlau, Szczecin, Prague, then Bratislava; reunion with her brother; traveling to Budapest, then Sátoraljaújhely; participating in Bene ʻAḳiva; depression after learning all her sisters had been killed; traveling illegally to Germany; living in Windsheim displaced persons camp; illegal emigration to Palestine; serving in the Israel-Arab War; marriage; and her daughter's birth. Ms. V. discusses her loss of faith, then regaining it; attributing her survival to help from friends; insensitive treatment of survivors in Israel; persistent, painful memories; and recurring nightmares.

7 videocassettes