Odette A. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Odette A., who was born in 1914. She recounts completing medical studies in Paris in 1939; working in Montargis; dismissal due to anti-Jewish laws; moving to Nice; organizing a network with her future husband to rescue Jewish children; assistance from OSE, the Joint, the Bishop of Nice, and other church and civic officials; hiding some 450 children; manufacturing false documents; learning her father was hiding and her mother and sister were deported (they did not return); imprisonment; interrogations; transfer to Drancy; and deportation to Birkenau. Dr. A. describes caring for the ill en route; quarantine; working with a Polish staff physician; living with prisoner doctors, nurses, and the Mengele twins; assignment to a "hospital" block; obtaining medication through Canada Kommando workers; sharing extra food; watching Mengele's selections; liquidation of the Zigeunerlager (Gypsy Lager); transfer to Bergen-Belsen; working in a "hospital"; liberation by English troops; their shock at the conditions; continuing to care for sick prisoners; repatriation to Paris; reunion with her father; recovering in Cha?teau-d'Oex, Switzerland; joining her future husband in Nice; and their work for OSE aiding the children they had hidden. Dr. A. vividly details events in concentration camps, relations between prisoners, and her emotional state.
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. This testimony cannot be used for commercial purposes.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- Mengele, Josef, -- 1911-1979.
- Abadi, Moussa.
- A., Odette, -- 1914-1999.
Corporate Bodies
- Bergen-Belsen (Concentration camp)
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
- World Union OSE.
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
- Drancy (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Aid by non-Jews.
- False papers.
- Mutual aid.
- Postwar experiences.
- Hospitals in concentration camps.
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Forced labor.
- Concentration camps -- Sociological aspects.
- Resistance.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, French.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- France.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Video tapes.
- Women.
- Holocaust survivors.
Places
- Nice (France)
- Montargis (France)
- Paris (France)
- France.
- Château-d'Oex (Switzerland)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat