Hertha B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Hertha B., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1920. She recounts her parents' strong German identity; her father's service in World War I; studying with Regina Jonas, a female rabbi; expulsion from school in 1936 due to anti-Jewish laws; attending a Jewish seminary to train as a kindergarten teacher; employment in a children's camp near Schmiedeberg (presently Kowary, Poland) and Hirschberg (presently Jelenia Góra); locals breaking all the windows on Kristallnacht; returning with the children to Berlin; preparing for emigration to Palestine with a group in Havelberg; meeting her husband; marriage; a grueling ship journey to illegally emigrate to Palestine in October 1939; arrival in January 1940 after interception by the British; a six-month incarceration in ʻAtlit; living on a kibbutz; settling near Haifa; receiving a letter from her parents in October 1940 (she never heard from them again); her son's birth; her husband's military service in the 1948 and 1956 wars; and returning to Berlin in 1957. Ms. B. discusses feeling at home in Berlin; identifying herself as a Jew; learning her parents had been deported to Theresienstadt; and the deaths of all her relatives but one during the Holocaust. She shows photographs.

2 videocassettes