Ella A. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Ella A., who was born in Mukacheve, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1925, one of six children. She recalls being poor, but happy; cordial relations with non-Jews; apprenticing as a seamstress; belonging to Mizrachi; Hungarian occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions, including confiscation of her father's business; one brother's draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion; German occupation in spring 1944; round-up to the ghetto; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her immediate family; staying with cousins; crying all the time; refusing to eat; a prisoner compelling her to eat; Gisella Perl delivering a baby in her barrack (it was killed by prisoners); transport in open freight cars to Ravensbrück, then three weeks later to Bendorf; slave labor in an underground munitions factory; train transfer in March; liberation from the train by a Count Bernadotte Red Cross group; transfer to Landskrona; quarantine for six weeks; living in Värnamo; learning her father and a brother had survived; emigration to join relatives in the United States; visiting her father and brother in Mukacheve in 1969; their emigration to Israel in 1972; and frequently visiting them. Ms. A. discusses not sharing her experiences for over twenty years; mental and physical illness resulting from the war years; psychological help after her daughter's death; and her sense that she can never be completely happy.

1 videocassette