Matilda H. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Matilda H., who was born in Prešov, Czechoslovakia in 1924, one of eight children. She recalls participating in Hashomer Hatzair and a communist youth group; deportation in March 1942 to Poprad, then Auschwitz; slave labor; transfer to Birkenau; various assignments, including the Canada Kommando; joining a resistance group; contracting typhus; organized distribution of "stolen" food and medicine by the resistance; her eldest sister's arrival, then selection for gassing; the death march to Ravensbrück; assisting her friend; posing as non-Jewish political prisoners; evacuation from Ravensbrück; assistance from POWs; liberation by Soviet troops in May 1945; Soviets raping her friend; returning to Prešov via Neubrandenburg and Prague; reunion with a sister and brother, her only surviving relatives; difficult relations with her sister and others who were not in camps; marriage; persecution due to her brother's arrest in 1951; the births of her daughters; and her brother's release in 1954. Mrs. H. discusses the importance of the resistance organization and friends to her survival; intergroup relations in the camps; raising their morale by singing; and rejecting Judaism because she thinks of her Jewish identity as an externally defined stigma. She shows photographs.

3 videocassettes