Frieda K. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Frieda K., who was born in Thessalonikē, Greece in 1921, one of five children. She recounts her family's affluence; cordial relations with non-Jews; attending an Alliance Israélite Universelle school; her family's friendship with Zvi Koretz, the chief rabbi; one sister's emigration to Israel in 1935; Italian occupation; her brother's military draft; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; assistance from a German soldier assigned to live with them; her brother's escape (she never saw him again); ghettoization; round-up to the Baron de Hirsch area; separation from another brother; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in April 1943; separation from her parents; a privileged position as a translator in Canada Kommando; smuggling food and shoes to her sister in another block; assistance from Mala Zimetbaum when she was ill; hospitalization; depression upon learning her sister had been killed; a German prisoner protecting her from selection; kapos giving her extra food; the pervasive odor of burning flesh; Mala Zimetbaum's suicide before she was to be publicly hanged (she had escaped); fasting on Yom Kippur; a death march to Gliwice in January 1945; train transfer to Ravensbrück, then Neustadt-Glewe; trading jewelry from the Canada Kommando for food; Allied bombings; liberation by United States troops; arrival of Soviet soldiers; traveling to Nienburg, Leese, and Kevelaer displaced persons camp; transfer to Brussels; assistance from former neighbors and relatives in Antwerp; returning home via Athens; contact with her siblings in Israel; assistance from the Joint; her brother-in-law visiting from Israel; illegal emigration by ship to Palestine; interdiction by the British; brief incarceration; her relatives providing care and nurturing; marriage; and the births of two daughters. Ms. K. discusses considering suicide in Birkenau; status and relations among prisoner groups; and continuing nightmares and anxiety resulting from her experiences. Ms. K. shows photographs and sings songs.

6 videocassettes