Barbara T. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Barbara T., who was born in Sighet, Romania in 1925. Mrs. T. discusses Sighet; ethnic rivalries; Jewish life; Hungarian occupation in 1940; attending school in Kolozsva?r (Cluj); and Zionist activities. She describes the failure of Jewish leaders to inform the community of the fate of Polish Jewry; her three brothers' conscription into Hungarian labor battalions; German occupation; a last Passover seder; her father's arrest as a hostage, with others, to ensure compliance with German orders; humiliating body searches by Hungarian gendarmes; and deportation. Mrs. T. recalls arrival at Auschwitz; the pervasive "stench"; separation from her mother; walking to Birkenau; believing for weeks the "ovens" were a bakery; overwhelming hunger and the resulting psychological debilitation; transport to Weisswasser in January 1945; work in an airplane factory; receiving food from French POWs; liberation by Soviets in May; and return to Sighet two months later. She discusses her book, which focuses on the immediate postwar period and efforts to live as "normal humans" again; leaving Sighet in 1947; working for the Joint in Munich; learning one brother had survived and was in Palestine; emigration to the United States in 1949; marriage in 1957; involvement in Jewish communal affairs; and attending college, which led to the writing of her book.

2 videocassettes (3/4" u-matic)