Antonia K. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Antonia K., who was born in Worms, Germany in 1925. She recounts moving to her maternal grandparents' home in Nentershausen when she was eighteen months old; moving to Bunzlau (presently Bolesławiec) eight years later when her mother married a rabbi; anti-Jewish discrimination at school; the synagogue burning and her stepfather's brief deportation to Dachau on Kristallnacht; plans to join her maternal uncle in Palestine; traveling to Amsterdam to join her stepbrother while awaiting travel documents; German invasion; obtaining $425,000 from maternal relatives in Switzerland and Palestine to avoid deportation (her stepbrother married a non-Jew and was hidden throughout the war); receiving deportation orders for her alone; a Catholic physician removing her appendix to prevent her deportation; her parents' arrest; joining them so they would not be killed; deportation to Westerbork in April 1943, then to Bergen-Belsen in January 1944; disbelief this was happening to her; forced labor in a factory, then removing corpses from barracks; separation into a group of 283 people; improved conditions; train transfer to Istanbul via Vienna, then to Palestine; marriage; emigration to the United States in 1959; and her parents' return to Germany. Ms. K. recalls her father organizing prayers in Bergen-Belsen on Yom Kippur; never discussing their war experiences; crediting her mother for their survival; continuing fear of large dogs due to her experiences; and her grandmother and two great aunts surviving Theresienstadt. She shows photographs, documents, and the diary her father kept throughout the war.

1 videocassette