Elaine G. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Elaine G., who was born in Czechoslovakia and raised in Poprad. She recounts a large extended family; holiday celebrations; participating in Makabi ha-tsa?ir; summers in Pres?ov; German invasion; expulsion from school in 1940; inclusion in a Hlinka guard round-up of older teenage girls in March 1942; transport to Auschwitz; slave labor building roads and in fields; receiving extra food from a friend's cousin; transfer to Birkenau; a privileged position in the hospital moving corpses (the privileges were receiving extra food, bathing, and not having to "stand appell"); seeing her father and grandmother; sharing food with an aunt, and later, moving her corpse, as well as her cousins'; reassignment cutting arriving prisoners' hair; public hanging of an escapee; a prisoner revolt in one crematorium; transfer to Hindenburg in 1944; a death march via Leipzig to Bergen-Belsen in early 1945; a woman giving birth en route; liberation by British troops in April; transfer to Celle; assistance from UNRRA; returning home in June 1946; marriage in November 1947; and emigration to Israel in 1949, then later to the United States due to her poor health. Ms. G. discusses numbness in the camps; disbelief that she survived such conditions; difficulty expressing her experience in words; attributing her survival to luck and faith in God; ill health due to her experiences; and sharing her story with her children and grandchildren.
Extent and Medium
3 videocassettes
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., Elaine.
Corporate Bodies
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
- Bergen-Belsen (Concentration camp)
- United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
- Gordonyah--Makabi ha-tsaʻir (Association)
- Hlinkova slovenská l̕udová strana.
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Atrocities.
- Faith.
- Death marches.
- Postwar experiences.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Forced labor.
- Concentration camp inmates -- Family relationships.
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Concentration camps -- Revolts.
- Childbirth in concentration camps.
- Postwar effects.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Mutual aid.
- Hospitals in concentration camps.
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Women.
Places
- Czechoslovakia.
- Poprad (Slovakia)
- Prešov (Slovakia)
- Celle (Germany)
- Israel.
- Hindenburg (Poland : Concentration camp)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat