Hana D. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Hana D., who was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia (presently Czech Republic) in 1931. She recounts living in Olbramovice on her paternal grandmother's farm, which her father managed; her parents' divorce; remaining with her father; not knowing she was Jewish; occasional visits with her mother; German invasion; confiscation of the farm; living with her father's sister in Prague, then with her mother; anti-Jewish laws, including expulsion from school; briefly hiding with her father's non-Jewish friends; secretly studying with other children under private teachers; her mother's deportation (she never saw her again); her father's deportation to Theresienstadt; remaining with her aunt; their deportation to Theresienstadt in July 1942; a joyful reunion with her father; placement in a children's barrack; brief hospitalization; lessons, singing groups, performances, and friendships; sham improvements for a Red Cross visit and Nazi filming; her father's deportation; deportation with an aunt and the barrack head to Auschwitz/Birkenau in November 1944; separation from her aunt upon arrival; the barrack head protecting her; their transfer to Oederan a week later; slave labor in a munitions factory; assistance from Italian prisoners-of-war; receiving a toothbrush for her thirteenth birthday; transfer back to Theresienstadt; liberation by Soviet troops; returning to Prague, then Olbramovice; living with the family that had hidden her; learning from the barrack head her father had perished in Dachau; attending gymnasium in Prague; migration to Israel via Genoa in 1949; and reunion with relatives who had emigrated before the war. Ms. D. discusses relations between prisoner groups and sharing her experiences with her children, particularly so they "know" her father. She shows photographs and a journal she kept in Theresienstadt.

8 videocassettes