Helga P. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Helga P., who was born in Charlottenburg, Germany in January 1939, the illegitimate child of a Jewish father, whom she never knew, and a half-Jewish mother. She recounts staying in a children's home in Eberswalde until the war began in September; living with her mother, uncle, and grandparents in Berlin; living briefly with her mother in Zedlitz; her Jewish grandmother hiding during Gestapo raids; her Protestant grandfather's efforts to save them; living in Brieselang; liberation by Soviet troops; resuming school; returning to Berlin; attending Jewish and Protestant services; her mother's marriage in 1955; emigration to the United States in 1961; marriage; visiting her mother annually; and her husband's death in 1975. Ms. P. discusses her close relationship with her grandparents; her grandfather's courage and resourcefulness in saving them; the loss of most of her grandmother's family in the Holocaust; her mother informing her that her father had been shot, but her reluctance to say more; her own reluctance to question her mother and her own children not understanding that; and fears resulting from wartime bombings. She shows photographs.

2 videocassettes