Sara G. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Sara G., who was born in 1929 in Biała Podlaska, Poland, one of four children. She recounts her family's orthodoxy; attending public school; her sister's marriage and move to Vilnius; antisemitic harassment; brief Soviet occupation; one brother fleeing east; German occupation; ghettoization; clandestinely trading merchandise from the family store; her father's deportation (she never saw him again); hiding during a three-day round-up, in which her grandfather was shot; transfer to the Międzyrzecz ghetto; staying with an aunt who already lived there; her mother's death from illness; separation from her brother when she was deported to Majdanek (he did not survive); giving her age as sixteen per her mother's advice (she was fourteen); public hanging of an escapee; her sense of isolation and losing her will to live; transfer to Skarżysko-Kamienna; slave labor in a munitions factory (Werke A), then a HASAG factory outside the camp; a Polish civilian worker (her parents' former customer) giving her extra food; sharing it with friends; transfer to a HASAG factory in Częstochowa eighteen months later; abandonment by the German guards; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to Łuków; returning home; living with relatives; correspondence from her brother (he was in Palestine); reunion with her sister; traveling to Szczecin, then Hamburg; living in Bad Reichenhall displaced persons camp; assistance from UNRRA; illegal emigration to Palestine; incarceration on Cyprus; arrival in Israel in 1948; marriage to a survivor in 1950; and the births of two children. Ms. G. notes sharing her experiences with her children and grandchildren.
Extent and Medium
7 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony is open with permission.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- G., Sara, -- 1929-
Corporate Bodies
- Skarżysko-Kamienna (Concentration camp)
- Majdanek (Concentration camp)
- Częstochowa (Concentration camp)
- United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
- Bad Reichenhall (Displaced persons camp)
- Hugo Schneider Aktiengesellschaft.
Subjects
- Hiding.
- Mutual aid.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Soviet occupation.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Postwar experiences.
- Jews -- Poland -- Biała Podlaska.
- Jewish ghettos.
- Forced labor.
- Jews -- Poland -- Międzyrzecz.
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Atrocities.
- Child survivors.
- Refugee camps.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Women.
- Video tapes.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
Places
- Łuków (Lublin, Poland)
- Szczecin (Poland)
- Poland.
- Biała Podlaska (Poland)
- Palestine -- Emigration and immigration.
- Biała Podlaska ghetto.
- Hamburg (Germany)
- Cyprus.
- Międzyrzecz ghetto.
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat