Betty C. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Betty C., who was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1919, the youngest of five sisters. She recounts her family's orthodoxy; attending public school; antisemitic harassment; attending a Jewish school; participating in a Zionist youth group; one sister's emigration to Palestine in 1936; her father's death; preparing to emigrate to Palestine on a Hechalutz kibbutz in Beverwijk; German invasion; returning to Amsterdam; marriage; operating a children's kibbutz in Elden with her husband; arrest in October 1942; deportation to Westerbork; arrival of her mother and one sister; deportation with her mother and husband to Auschwitz in September 1943; separation from her mother; volunteering for specious medical experiments by Dr. Claus Clauberg to avoid transfer to Birkenau, where she thought she could not survive; sending food and messages to her husband; a camp official saving him from selections; working in the hospital; leading prayer sessions; encountering the camp Kommandant, Rudolf Höss; public hangings; a death march and train transfer to Bergen-Belsen in January 1945; learning one sister was there; receiving extra food from her; contracting typhus; her sister nursing her; liberation by British troops; assistance from the Red Cross; repatriation to Eindhoven; learning her husband had not survived; hospitalization; illegal emigration by ship to Palestine via Marseille; interdiction by the British; brief incarceration; reunion with her sister; marriage; and adopting two children. Ms. C. discusses losing her religious faith in the camps; the prisoner hierarchy and relations among national groups; and chronic health problems resulting from her experiences.

6 videocassettes