Leah S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Leah S., who was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1933, the first of two children. She recounts attending a Jewish school; her family's orthodoxy; cordial relations with non-Jews; her father traveling to Belgium for business; German invasion; her maternal grandparents moving in with them; learning her father had emigrated to the United States; her grandfather's death; Swiss relatives obtaining Paraguayan passports for them; her mother hiding Jews; denunciation; deportation to Westerbork with her mother, brother and grandmother from the Schauberg theater in spring 1943; transfer to Bergen-Belsen in the fall; her mother smuggling extra food for them from her job; endless appels; hunger and cold; learning they were on the list for transfer; her mother refusing to leave without her grandmother (the authorities acceded); receiving Red Cross food packages on the train to Lindele (Biberach); good treatment by the British prisoners who preceded them there; quickly recuperating; her Swiss relatives bringing them to Zurich when the war ended; and emigration to join her father in the United States a year later. Ms. S. discusses national prisoner groups in Bergen-Belsen; songs they sang; not discussing her experiences with her family or others for many years; nightmares resulting from her experiences; recently visiting Belsen with her grandson; and finding their names in camp records. She shows photographs and documents.

1 videocassette