Vera G. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Vera G., who was born in Kecel, Hungary in 1938, the younger of two children. She recounts her grandmother living with them; confiscation of the family business due to anti-Jewish laws; her father's one-year imprisonment due to a supposed violation; cousins living with them; former non-Jewish business suppliers bringing them food; German occupation in spring 1944; deportation with her family (aunts, cousins, and her grandmother) to Szeged, a week later to Strasshof, then to Sankt Pölten; the older children organizing a "school" for the younger ones while the adults did forced labor; bombings after about a year; her father organizing their escape during a bombing; their other relatives staying behind; hiding when her father returned to retrieve them; learning they had all been deported or shot (none survived); her father entering the local hospital as a non-Jewish refugee (he was diabetic and needed insulin); living in hospital buildings for bombing victims; Soviet liberation; leaving on April 15; arriving in Budapest via Vienna on May 5; returning to Kecel; confiscation of Jewish property by the Arrow Cross, including their home; she and her brother completing school in Budapest; working in Győr; escaping to Vienna during the 1956 uprising; being brought to the United States with assistance from HIAS; and marriage in 1957. Ms. G. discusses a monument her father built to victims of the Holocaust; visiting Hungary after her parents' deaths; and not sharing her experiences with her children. She shows photographs.
Extent and Medium
1 videocassette
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony is open with permission.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- G., Vera, -- 1938-
Corporate Bodies
- Strasshof (Concentration camp)
- HIAS (Agency)
- Nyilaskeresztes Párt.
Subjects
- Holocaust survivors.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Women.
- Video tapes.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- Mothers and daughters.
- Fathers and daughters.
- Brothers and sisters.
- Concentration camp inmates -- Family relationships.
- Grandparent and child.
- Escapes.
- Child survivors.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Hiding.
- Antisemitism -- Postwar.
- Postwar experiences.
- Survivor-child relations.
Places
- Hungary.
- Szeged (Hungary)
- Kecel (Hungary)
- Budapest (Hungary)
- Vienna (Austria)
- Hungary -- History -- Revolution, 1956 -- Personal narratives.
- Győr (Hungary)
- Sankt Pölten (Austria : Concentration camp)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat