Helen B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Helen B., who was born in in 1923 in Łódź, Poland, one of four sisters. She recalls her family's affluence and modernity; their enthusiasm for opera and dancing; German invasion; deportation with her family to Dębica; moving to Radom; living with an aunt; all of them contracting typhus; ghettoization; forced labor outside the ghetto; her mother's deportation; hiding when her work group was deported; smuggling herself back to the ghetto; marriage; deportation with her family to Majdanek in January 1944; transfer with two sisters to Płaszów in March; a prisoner doctor performing an abortion to save her from selection for death; assistance from Polish civilian workers; transfer with her husband, sisters, and father to Wieliczka in August, then to Auschwitz a few weeks later; separation from her father, husband, and one sister; meeting Rella W. during transfer with one sister to Mühlhausen; slave labor in a munitions factory; dancing and singing to raise prisoner morale; transfer to Bergen-Belsen in winter 1945; Rella W. recovering her stolen shoes; receiving extra food from a friend; cannibalism of Russian POWs; encouraging her sister when she lost her will to live; liberation by British troops; transfer to the displaced persons camp; reunion with her husband and two sisters; living in the Stuttgart displaced persons camp; and emigration to the United States in April 1948. Ms. B. discusses her nervous breakdown when she learned how her father had been killed; her husband's lifelong depression resulting from the Holocaust; relations between ethnic groups in camps; and her continuing love of music and dance. She shows photographs.

1 videocassette