Chaia P. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Chaia P., who was born in Kaminʹ-Kashyrsʹkyĭ, Poland (presently Ukraine) in 1922, one of three children. She recounts attending a Polish school; participating in Hechalutz; Soviet occupation in fall 1939; a Soviet soldier, who lived with them, offering to take her family when the Soviets retreated; her father's decision to remain; German invasion; a round-up that included her father and brother; a relative on the Judenrat ascertaining they had been shot; ghettoization; a Ukrainian friend smuggling food to them; exemption from a mass killing due to their jobs; Romanies, whom her family had helped, assisting her escape an execution; hiding in a bunker with her family and others; discovery by the Germans; escaping to another bunker; a non-Jew hiding her and three women with his wife's sister; observing shootings of Jews; hiding in their rescuers' barn, basement, a bunker, and with another of his wife's sisters; going to the forest during conflicts between Ukrainians and Poles; joining her cousin's friend's partisan unit; meeting her future husband; posing as a man; helping care for children in the family camp; moving to a swamp when a German attack was imminent; traveling to Rafalovka, then Sarny; draft by the Soviet military; being sent to Kiev, then Kharkiv; separation from her future husband; joining his family in Kovelʹ; returning home; leaving after being warned by non-Jews returning Jews were being murdered; reunion with her future husband in Kovelʹ; marriage; traveling to Chełm, Lublin, then Kraków; assistance from the Jewish Brigade; traveling to Budapest, Graz, Modena, then Santa Maria with Beriḥah; visiting Rome and Milan; illegal emigration by ship to Palestine in 1945; staying with her aunt; the births of two daughters; and her husband's death in 1948. Ms. P. notes she is the sole survivor of her immediate family.

8 videocassettes