Miriam B. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Miriam B., who was born in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in 1921. She recounts her family's poverty; cordial relations with Muslim neighbors; attending school; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; German invasion; her father's round-up in June; one month in a slave labor camp; contact with partisans when she returned home; obtaining false papers; deportation of her mother, grandmother, and other relatives to Djakovo (they were all killed); hiding in several locations; capture by the Ustaša; transfer to a concentration camp; escaping; hiding with a non-Jew; joining the communist partisans; her unit cooperating with Chetnik units; assignment as a medic in Pali; a Chetnik confiscating all her jewelry, including her mother's engagement ring; a man warning her the Chetniks would kill her; fleeing to a unit fighting Chetniks; returning to Sarajevo in spring 1942; hiding with Serbs in a village, then with Muslims in Sarajevo; traveling to Italian-occupied Mostar; hiding with an aunt in Metković; traveling to Dubrovnik; capture by Chetniks (they killed several prisoners); rescue by partisans; serving as a medic; liberating villages; entering Škofja Loka; joining the Communist Party; traveling to Trebnje; liberation; working as a nurse in Mostar, then Sarajevo; marriage; the births of two children; her husband's death in 1949; and emigration to Israel in 1972. Ms. B. notes she was in shock during the four years of the war, and not informing her children they were Jewish until they were fourteen, fearing for their safety.
Extent and Medium
6 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony is open with permission.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- B., Miriam, -- 1921-
Corporate Bodies
- World Hashomer Hatzair.
- Ustaša, hrvatska revolucionarna organizacija.
Subjects
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, Croatian.
- Escapes.
- Forced labor.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Yugoslavia.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Video tapes.
- Women.
- Postwar effects.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Postwar experiences.
- Partisans.
- Italian occupation.
- False papers.
- Hiding.
- Holocaust survivors.
Places
- Mostar (Bosnia and Hercegovina)
- Metković (Croatia)
- Škofja Loka (Slovenia)
- Dubrovnik (Croatia)
- Yugoslavia.
- Pali (Serbia)
- Sarajevo (Bosnia and Hercegovina)
- Trebnje (Slovenia)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat