Shoshana K. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Shoshana K., who was born in Prešov, Czechoslovakia in 1925, one of five children in a Hasidic family. She recounts attending a Jewish school; visiting relatives in Bardejov; transfer to a public school; anti-Jewish restrictions; confiscation of her father's store; deportation with her family by the Hlinka guard to the Dęblin ghetto; slave labor; a German officer allowing her to eat extra food; giving her soup ration to her mother; slave labor at an air strip; separation from her family (she never saw them again); transfer to the labor camp; assistance from a prisoner physician; hospitalization for two weeks; German soldiers and Polish workers sharing food; a public hanging; train transfer to Częstochowa in July 1944; slave labor in a munitions factory; liberation by Soviet troops in January 1945; living in the city for about six weeks; returning to Prešov; assistance from the Joint; retrieving a family photo; traveling to Prague, Paris, and Marseille, with assistance from Agudat Israel; illegal emigration to Palestine by ship in 1946; interdiction by the British; incarceration in ʻAtlit for six weeks; marriage to a survivor; the births of two children; and her husband's death in an accident. Ms. K. discusses losing her belief in God due to her experiences; nightmares; not sharing her experiences with her children, but sharing them with her grandchildren; and sending documents to Yad Vashem.
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
- K., Shoshana, -- 1925-
Corporate Bodies
- Częstochowa (Concentration camp)
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
- Agudat Israel.
- Hlinkova slovenská l̕udová strana.
Subjects
- Child survivors.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Atrocities.
- Forced labor.
- Nightmares.
- Faith.
- Jews -- Poland -- Dęblin (Warsaw)
- Jewish ghettos.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- Postwar experiences.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Postwar effects.
- Hospitals in concentration camps.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Mutual aid.
- Hlinka guard.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Video tapes.
- Women.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
Places
- Marseille (France)
- Palestine -- Emigration and immigration.
- Prague (Czech Republic)
- Paris (France)
- Bardejov (Slovakia)
- Częstochowa (Poland)
- Czechoslovakia.
- Prešov (Slovakia)
- Demblin (Poland : Concentration camp)
- ʻAtlit (Israel)
- Dęblin ghetto.
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat