Mirjam A. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Mirjam A., who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1925, the only child in a wealthy, assimilated family. She recalls a happy childhood; attending an evangelical school; frequent visits to grandparents in Trenčín; participating in a leftist Zionist youth movement when she was twelve; antisemitic harassment and expulsion from school; working as an assistant in a Jewish kindergarten for eighteen months; moving to Trenčín in 1941 due to antisemitic laws; her mother's hospitalization in Bratislava; returning to Bratislava with her father to avoid deportation; her father's hospitalization; hiding in a room for a year but visiting her parents daily by concealing her star; obtaining false papers; working as a housekeeper for non-Jews (unbeknownst to her they were hiding Jews); informing her employers she was Jewish; additional risks after the Slovak uprising; her employers helping her find a childcare position for two children whose father was German; leaving when it became dangerous; working as a housekeeper in Topol̕čany; liberation on May 1, 1945; immediately returning to Bratislava; the collapse of her world upon learning her parents had been deported and killed; attending high school; traveling to Israel in 1948; returning a year later to finish university; marriage in 1952; the births of three children; working as a university language teacher; emigration to Israel in 1968; difficulties adjusting to life there; and visiting Bratislava every two years after 1989. Ms. A. attributes her survival to luck, her father, and help from non-Jews; not sharing her story with anyone, including her children, until recently; nightmares resulting from her experiences; and her sense that Israel is her home.

1 videocassette