Erna E. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Erna E., who was born in Oświęcim, Poland in 1920. She recounts her large family's affluence; summering in mountain resorts; participating in Betar; Vladimir Jabotinsky staying at their home; antisemitic harassment beginning in 1933; one year of school in Myslowice; one brother serving in the Polish military; German invasion in 1939; fleeing with her family to Przeworsk; her father continuing to the Soviet zone; finding her brother in Kraków (he had been wounded); their return home; brief arrest with her sister by Soviets in Tarnów en route to find their father; reunion with him in Lʹviv; a brief stay in Rava Ruʹska; returning home; volunteering with a sister, brother, and his wife for work in November 1940; their deportation to Annaberg; her brother's transfer to Auschwitz (her parents received his ashes shortly thereafter); transfer to Ottmuth; her job in the hospital; poisoning herself; hospitalization in Krapowice; escaping; joining her family in the Sosnowice ghetto; transfer back to Annaberg; working in the hospital; transfer six months later to Parschnitz, then to Markstädt, and back to Parschnitz for a year; learning her father had died; arranging for her mother and sisters to join her; separation from them upon transfer to Blechhammer, then Auschwitz/Birkenau in 1943; assignment to the "medical experiment" barracks; caring for Greek women on whom the "experiments" were done, most of whom died; transfer to Union factory; working as a translator, then a supervisor; participating in sabotage; assistance from civilian workers and Wehrmacht; a death march and train transfer with her cousin to Ravensbrück; transfer by herself to Malchow, then Taucha; escaping with others from a death march; a man hiding them until the arrival of Soviet troops; traveling to Sosnowiec; reunion with her mother and sister; joining a brother in Feldafing displaced persons camp; her family joining them; and testifying against a camp official.

7 videocassettes