Paulina B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Paulina B., who was born in Gorlice, Poland (then Austro-Hungarian Monarchy), one of three children. She recounts her family's orthodoxy; her father's service in World War I; attending Beit Yakov, public school, then gymnasium; summer vacations at her aunt's house in Nowy Sącz; participating in Noʻar ha-Tsiyoni; arrest by Polish police for Zionist activity; attending university in Kraków; a trip to Italy with her boyfriend; vacationing in Zakopane; working for the Red Cross; German invasion; relocating to her father's village; fleeing east; German bombardment; traveling to Skelevka (Felsztyn); reunion with her boyfriend in Sambir; traveling with him to Zabolotiv; obtaining false papers as non-Jews; moving to several villages, including Zagoździe and Kolomyi︠a︡; living as non-Jews in Tarńow; assistance from the Judenrat; hiding in a bunker; entering the Tarńow ghetto; forced factory labor; escaping with a friend's child to Kraków; obtaining papers as Polish guest workers through the underground; traveling to Vienna, then Semmering; working in Hermagor; sabotaging farm production; assisting prisoners of war; sexual harassment by the farm's owner; transfer to another farm; working at the train station in Villach; assisting Yugoslav partisans; working in a clinic; smuggling medicine to partisans; liberation by British troops; traveling to Arnoldstein, Tarviso, then Udine, with assistance from a British officer; locating the Jewish Brigade in Bologna; traveling to Rome; reunion with a cousin; traveling to Venice, then Rome; assistance from the Joint; emigration to Palestine via Marseille; incarceration in ʻAtlit; escaping; learning her future husband was alive; joining him in Munich; and visiting Gorlice and Warsaw. Ms. B. discusses receiving comfort from praying in churches while posing as a non-Jew, and mixed feelings about being Christian or Jewish after the war. She shows photographs.

5 videocassettes