Thérèse G. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Thérèse G., who was born in Kłobuck, Poland in 1928, the older of two sisters. She recounts emigration to Brussels when she was three months old; attending school; German bombing and invasion in May 1940; anti-Jewish laws, including wearing the star; her parents placing her and her sister (with others from her school) in a convent in Louvain in 1942; the nuns instructing them not to reveal they were Jewish; attending mass and praying; her parents retrieving them in 1944, fearing Allied bombings in Louvain; hiding with them and her aunt in Groot-Bijgaarden (Grand Bigard); their denouncement and arrest; incarceration in Avenue Louise for a few days, then in Malines; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau three months later; gender separation upon arrival; remaining with her aunt after selection (she never saw her sister or mother again); several slave labor assignments; nationality tensions among groups of prisoners; crying constantly; a German soldier giving her bread when she cleaned his quarters; transfer with her aunt a few months later to Landsberg, then Türkheim; a public hanging; assignment to the kitchen; a severe beating for taking food; hospitalization for an injured foot; a death march to Dachau, then Wolfratshausen; liberation by United States troops; returning to Brussels; reunion with her father; marriage to a survivor; emigration to Israel; her daughter's birth; and returning to Belgium in 1953. Ms. G. discusses recognition by Yad Vashem of one of the nuns who hid her; the importance of her aunt's constant support to her survival; apathy following liberation; nightmares; finding Auschwitz "sanitized" during a 1970s visit with her husband; and sharing her experiences with her children. She shows photographs and documents.

4 videocassettes