Celia K. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Celia K., who was born in Szarkowszczyzna, a small town near Vilna, Poland, in 1923. In this extraordinarily detailed and vivid testimony, Mrs. K. describes her prewar education; the German occupation; the ghettoization of her town; and her work there as a waitress in the officers' dining hall. She tells of her transfer to the Glubokoye ghetto; being tortured for refusing to become the mistress of a Kommandant, and the psychological effects of this experience; assisting others to flee the ghetto; and her own escape, with the aid of a Polish farmer. She relates spending the next year and a half hidden under the floor of a barn, where she was eventually joined by her sister; several narrow escapes from discovery; and making her way to the partisans after being evicted from her hiding place. Mrs. K. recounts her activities with the partisans, including the shooting of many people in anti-Jewish villages; liberation by the Russians in 1944; and her marriage and very gradual physical recovery. She also recalls the birth of her children and her psychological problems with raising them; her emigration to the United States; and the contrast between the poverty and neglect she experienced upon arrival in this country and the current treatment of Russian-Jewish refugees.

2 videocassettes (3/4" u-matic)