Olga S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Olga S., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1926 to a non-Jewish father and Jewish mother. She recounts being baptized; she and her mother being beaten by a Nazi "Brownshirt" (SA) in 1932; several forced relocations because her mother was Jewish; her mother's arrest and release six weeks later; briefly staying with her mother's relatives in Poland; their return to Berlin; her father's dismissal from the police force due to the Nuremberg laws; attending school with the school director's help; her father rejecting offers of emigration for her and her brother so the family would remain together; having to work clearing bombing rubble and corpses; her brother and father each being arrested several times; her mother's deportation in 1943; hospitalization and surgery; assistance from one doctor in leaving the hospital; hiding with nuns on a farm outside Berlin; liberation by Soviet troops in May 1945; reunion with her family; wanting to take revenge, but her brother convincing her not to sink to the level of their victimizers; permanent medical problems resulting from her experiences; and becoming a Russian teacher. Ms. S. discusses her parents' poor health and early deaths resulting from their experiences; vainly searching for surviving relatives in Poland; contact with a distant relative in Israel; antisemitic harassment after the war; and never forgiving her neighbors for their treatment during the war. She shows a document.

3 videocassettes