Agnesa K. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Agnesa K., who was born in Košice, Czechoslovakia in 1924. She recalls being raised in Prešov; close relations with her extended family; her Austrian nanny; minimal Jewish education; belonging to Hashomer Hatzair despite her father's anti-Zionism; Slovak independence; anti-Jewish harassment, including expulsion from school in 1940; attending sewing classes; deportations beginning in spring 1942; pretending to be sick during a round-up; her parents arranging her escape to relatives in Budapest; her uncle arranging to hide her in a convent in III. Kerület (Óbuda); visits from relatives; isolation from outside events; finding comfort in Catholicism; baptism during an air raid; German occupation; joining a group training to be nuns (the nuns thought it would be safer); realizing there were many Jewish women there; leaving with one Jewish friend; living with her friend's former maid in Budapest; liberation by Soviet troops; relatives finding her; traveling to Prešov; learning her parents had been deported (they did not return); living with an aunt in Košice, then Bratislava; and marriage in 1946. Ms. K. discusses the fates of many relatives during the war; postwar antisemitism in Czechoslovakia, including the Slansky trial, job loss, and her husband's imprisonment; support from non-Jews; and emigrating to Germany.

5 videocassettes