Claire S. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Claire S., who was born in Germany, the oldest of four children of Polish émigrés. She recounts her family's move to Brussels; attending school; working at fourteen to help support her family; joining the Bund; her father's arrest for debt resulting in his deportation to Germany; obtaining money to secure his return; German invasion; one brother hiding in a monastery; anti-Jewish restrictions; marriage in 1942; obtaining false papers; her sister's deportation; bribing officials to free an underground member from the Gestapo; her father's round-up and deportation; arrest and deportation to Malines with her husband; reunion with her father; the camp underground preparing escapes from deportation trains; deportation with her father and husband; jumping from the train with her husband (her father was too ill to jump); assistance from a priest; traveling to Liège; returning to Brussels with assistance from the underground; joining her mother and brother in hiding; aborting a pregnancy; one brother's flight to Switzerland; moving to Charleroi with her husband and mother; working for an underground newspaper; visiting her brother in the monastery; liberation; returning to Brussels; the birth and premature death of her child; her brother's return; emigrating to Uruguay, then Brazil; participating in Wizo; emigration to Israel, and the births of two daughters. Ms. S. discusses relief upon learning from a chance meeting with a woman who had been on their deportation train that her father had died on the train; testifying at a war crimes trial in Germany; and writing a book.
Extent and Medium
5 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
- S., Claire.
Corporate Bodies
- Wizo.
- Malines (Concentration camp)
- Allgemeyner Idisher arbayṭerbund in Liṭa, Poylen un Rusland.
Subjects
- Mothers and daughters.
- Brothers and sisters.
- Monasteries.
- Husband and wife.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Belgium.
- Abortion.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Video tapes.
- Women.
- Concentration camps -- Underground movements.
- Hiding.
- False papers.
- Postwar experiences.
- Escapes.
- Fathers and daughters.
- War crime trials -- Germany.
- Aid by non-Jews.
Places
- Liège (Belgium)
- Uruguay.
- Brazil.
- Charleroi (Belgium)
- Germany.
- Brussels (Belgium)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat