Klara B. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Klara B., who was born in Sombor, Yugoslavia, one of two sisters. She recounts studying ballet with her father, who was head of the dance teachers and a choreographer; their move to Budapest when she was nine so she could study under a prominent teacher/choreographer; returning to Sombor a year later; continuing to study with her father; attending gymnasium; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; attending university in Zagreb; returning home; Hungarian occupation; antisemitic violence by Hungarian soldiers; giving private dance lessons to help support her family; German occupation in 1944; her father being taken hostage; round-up with her mother and sister to a silk factory; separation from her mother when she and her sister were deported to Bačka Topola; briefly seeing their father; transfer to Auschwitz; assignment with her sister to slave labor in a munitions factory; cleaning the rooms of Wehrmacht soldiers, from whom she received extra food; singing and dancing for extra clothing and food; public executions of women who smuggled powder for the Sonderkommando revolt; a death march with her sister to Ravensbrück; transfer to Neustadt-Glewe; liberation by Soviet troops; hospitalization; traveling to Berlin, then Prague; repatriation to Zemun; traveling home via Novi Sad and Petrovaradin; moving back into their family home; and crying there for the first time over the loss of her parents.
Extent and Medium
1 videocassette
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
- B., Klara.
Corporate Bodies
- Bačka Topola (Concentration camp)
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- World Hashomer Hatzair.
- Neustadt-Glewe (Concentration camp)
- Ravensbrück (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Women.
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Atrocities.
- Forced labor.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Hungarian occupation.
- Sisters.
- Death marches.
- Concentration camp inmates -- Family relationships.
- Postwar experiences.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Mutual aid.
Places
- Budapest (Hungary)
- Zagreb (Croatia)
- Yugoslavia.
- Sombor (Serbia)
- Zemun (Belgrade, Serbia)
- Novi Sad (Serbia)
- Berlin (Germany)
- Prague (Czech Republic)
- Petrovaradin (Serbia)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat