Martha S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Martha S., who was born in Cluj, Romania in 1934. She recalls her parents were physicians who worked in a small village (Jews were banned from hospital positions); taking an orphan into their home; close relations with a large, extended family; moving to Gherla; Hungarian occupation; her father being taken for Hungarian slave labor battalions from 1942 to 1944; frequent visits; German occupation in 1944 (her father was home); anti-Jewish regulations; the round-up of Jews into a factory; train transfer to the Cluj ghetto; a friend warning her father not to go on transports (later learning they went to Auschwitz); transfer to the Budapest ghetto, then Bergen-Belsen; remaining with her parents and adopted sister; being sent to Switzerland in December 1944; living in a refugee camp; returning to Cluj in December 1945, seeking surviving relatives; antisemitic harassment in school; she and her adopted sister seldom discussing war experiences; her father's death in 1951; marriage to a non-Jew; their son's birth; emigration to Paris with her family (including her mother) in 1968, then to Canada; assistance from HIAS; and her son and his family identifying as Jews. Ms. S. discusses losing her belief in God when almost no relatives returned from the camps; her close relationship with her mother; believing they survived due to luck; and anxieties resulting from her war experiences.

3 videocassettes