Helen S. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Helen S., who was born in Vilna, Russia (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1917, one of three children. She recounts a happy childhood; attending public school; marriage in 1939; her husband's draft into the Polish military; his return in 1940; her son's birth in 1941; German invasion; ghettoization; hiding with her son, husband, and aunt in a bunker with a hundred others; their discovery; the Germans taking her son (she never saw him again); her aunt committing suicide; deportation to Stutthof; separation from her husband; beatings from guards from which she still bears scars; slave labor digging anti-tank ditches; a death march; liberation by Soviet troops; hiding in a house in Szczecin; Soviet soldiers raping survivors; assistance from two of her father's friends; traveling with a friend to Łódź, then Feldafing displaced persons camp; learning her husband had died shortly after liberation; working for UNRRA: remarriage to a survivor whose wife and child had been killed; emigration to the United States, with assistance from HIAS; the births of two daughters; and her second husband's death in 1997. Ms. S. notes not knowing the fate of her parents. She shows photographs.
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
- S., Helen, -- 1917-
Corporate Bodies
- United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
- Feldafing (Displaced persons camp)
- HIAS (Agency)
- Stutthof (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Postwar experiences.
- Hiding.
- Children -- Death.
- Postwar effects.
- Husband -- Death.
- Jews -- Lithuania -- Vilnius.
- Jewish ghettos.
- Husband and wife.
- Mothers and sons.
- Death marches.
- Forced labor.
- Refugee camps.
- Rape.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Women.
- Video tapes.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
Places
- Vilnius (Lithuania)
- Russia.
- Łódź (Poland)
- Szczecin (Poland)
- Vilna ghetto.
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat