Klara M. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Klara M., who was born in Dolné Saliby, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1925, the oldest of three children. She recalls her family's orthodoxy; cordial relations with non-Jews; attending a local Catholic school, then high school in Bratislava; Hungarian occupation in 1938; expulsion from school; forced relocation in 1944 to the Galanta, then the Nové Zámky ghetto; deportation to Auschwitz in June; separation from her parents and siblings (she never saw them again); transfer to Allendorf; slave labor in a munitions factory; exposure to chemicals that turned their hair orange (picric acid); Dutch and Yugoslav POWs receiving Red Cross packages; a death march in March 1945; abandonment by the guards; liberation by United States troops; transfer to Kassel, then Plzeň; returning home via Bratislava and Nové Zámky; finding an uncle; non-Jewish neighbors returning her family's belongings; marriage to a survivor in October 1945; moving to Bratislava; and the births of three children. Ms. M. discusses the importance of her group helping each other in camp to their survival; pervasive painful memories of separation from her family; reluctance to share her experiences with her children; and villagers in Dolné Saliby inscribing the names of local Jews murdered in the Holocaust on their church monuments.

1 videocassette