Chana S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Chana S., who was born in Krako?w, Poland in 1923. She describes having to leave school when war broke out; her family losing their prosperous business; ghettoization in 1941; deportation with her family to P?aszo?w; slave labor in salt mines; the deportation of her father to Mauthausen, her mother to another camp, and she and her sister to Auschwitz in 1943; and their agreement to meet in Krako?w after the war. Mrs. S. recalls three months in Birkenau; conditions of hunger, deprivation and illness; transfer to a camp in Czechoslovakia with her sister; liberation by Soviet troops; return to Krako?w in 1945; finding their home had been confiscated by Poles; reunion with her mother and sister; meeting her future husband, who had been in the Soviet Union during the war; leaving Poland in 1946; a year in a displaced persons camp in Germany; emigration to Israel; and her children's births in 1949 and 1953. She discusses details of prewar life in Krako?w; her reluctance to recount her experiences to her children and her sense that that was a mistake; the impact of the Eichmann and Demjanjuk trials in Israel; and the importance of Holocaust remembrance and education.

2 videocassettes