Sara S. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Sara S., who was born in Vylok, Czechoslovkia (presently Ukraine) in 1925, one of five children. She recounts cordial relations with non-Jews; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; Hungarian occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions; one brother fleeing to Budapest; another escaping to the Soviet Union; apprenticing as a seamstress; German invasion in spring 1944; her parents entrusting possessions to a non-Jewish neighbor; deportation with her parents and sister to the Sevluš ghetto, then a month later to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation with her sister from her parents (she never saw them again); transfer with her sister three days later to Kretinga; slave labor in a shoe workshop; fasting on Yom Kippur; transfer two months later to Stutthof; her assignment sorting shoes; hiding her sister when she was ill; clandestinely distributing newer shoes to prisoners, some in exchange for extra food, which she shared with her sister and friends; a death march in January 1945; helping her sister walk; liberation by Soviet troops; her sister's death; hospitalization; traveling to Kraków; returning home; reunion with one brother; learning her middle brother had been killed; traveling illegally to Budapest; reunion with another brother in Sokolov; his wedding; joining others intending to emigrate to Palestine; moving to Karlovy Vary, then Vienna; illegal emigration to Palestine with a former partisan via Genoa in 1947; and their child's birth in 1948. Ms. S. notes their neighbor returned some of their property after the war.
Extent and Medium
10 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
- S., Sara, -- 1925-
Corporate Bodies
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
- World Hashomer Hatzair.
- Stutthof (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Mutual aid.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Death marches.
- Hungarian occupation.
- Postwar experiences.
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Jewish ghettos.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Women.
- Concentration camp inmates -- Religious life.
- Forced labor.
- Sisters.
- Jews -- Ukraine -- Vynohradiv.
Places
- Kretinga (Lithuania : Concentration camp)
- Czechoslovakia.
- Vylok (Ukraine)
- Sokolov (Czech Republic)
- Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic)
- Kraków (Poland)
- Budapest (Hungary)
- Palestine -- Emigration and immigration.
- Sevluš ghetto.
- Vienna (Austria)
- Genoa (Italy)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat