Ada L. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Ada L., who was born in Jarosław, Poland in 1915, the youngest of seven children. She recounts participating in Akiba; marriage; German invasion; her father's round-up and murder; one brother's escape to the Soviet zone; her husband's deportation (he was killed); deportation to Sobibór; meeting her future husband, Yitzchak Lichtman; assignment to the laundry; the stench of burning corpses; sharing food from incoming transports; learning of her mother's arrival; fellow prisoners preventing her from joining her mother; setting the table and standing close to Adolf Eichmann when he visited; beatings by Ukrainian guards from which she still bears scars and suffers pain; the birth and murder of a child; Alexander Pechersky and others planning an escape; one prisoner (Shlomo Szmajzner) stealing guns; stealing bullets from German quarters; the mass escape in October 1943; hiding in the forest; joining her future husband who was in the Voroshilov brigade; liberation; her future husband's enlistment in the Polish military; living in Lublin; her future husband's return; their marriage; moving to Łódź; their daughter's birth; and emigration to Israel in 1950. Ms. L. discusses life in Sobibór: the privileged position of prisoner artists; getting drunk to numb the psychological pain; guards and SS men including Friedel Schwarz, Gustav Wagner, Greischutz, Josef Niemann, J. Kliehr, Karl Ludwig, and Karl Frenzel, two of whom were kind; her husband's privileged position as a skilled shoemaker; and some prisoners fasting on Yom Kippur. She discusses testifying at Eichmann's trial; visiting Sobibór at the invitation of a Polish minister; persistent pain, isolation, and nightmares resulting from her experiences; disbelief or disinterest in her experiences; and many inaccuracies in the film about Sobibór.

4 videocassettes