Malvinia S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Malvinia S., who was born in Sighet, Romania. She describes her family's Hasidism; her mother's death when she was eleven; one brother's emigration to Cuba; Hungarian occupation; her brother's draft into a forced labor battalion; obtaining documents in Velyikyy Bychkiv to confirm her father's citizenship; his death; ghettoization in spring 1944; deportation to Auschwitz; selections; a friend who obtained extra food and shared it with her; transfer to a camp in Upper Silesia; slave labor digging trenches; a death march; digging graves after mass killings; declining to escape with her friend; disappearance of German guards on May 5, 1945; recovering in an UNRRA hospital in Butovice; and returning to Sighet in June 1945. Mrs. S. recalls contacting her brother in Cuba through the Joint; learning her friend had survived and their reunion; learning her other brother had perished; traveling to Germany in June 1946; living in Leipheim; emigrating to France in February 1948, and Cuba later that year; marriage; fleeing to the United States with her children when Castro took over; and her husband's death in Cuba. She notes the importance of friends to her survival and the difficulty of discussing these experiences.

3 videocassettes