Naomi B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Naomi B., Who was born in Mukacheve, Czechoslovakia in 1924, the youngest of nine children in a Hasidic family. She recalls attending Czech school; Hungarian occupation in 1938; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; her brothers' draft into Hungarian slave labor battalions; her mother's death; German occupation in March 1944; ghettoization; the Judenrat encouraging obedience; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in May; separation from her family, except one sister; their transfer to Stutthof, then to another camp; slave labor in a munitions factory; Allied POWs instructing them to sabotage the bombs; punishment for helping others; a death march in winter 1945; their escape with six others; hiding in abandoned houses; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling home; reunion with her brother; living with a kind Romani; the shock of realizing her losses (her father, three siblings, and ten nieces and nephews); living with her sister who had hidden in Budapest; leaving to emigrate to Palestine; traveling to Bucharest, Budapest, Graz, Modena, Rome, and Ostia; assistance from the Joint, Hashomer Hatzair, and the Jewish Brigade; boarding an illegal ship in Genoa; interception by the British; incarceration in ?Atlit; living in a kibbutz, then Jerusalem; joining the Haganah; being wounded in the 1948 Israel-Arab War; hospitalization; the siege of Jerusalem; marriage; emigration to England; raising two children; and studying sculpture. Ms. B. discusses prisoner relations in the camps and representing the Holocaust and her emotions through her sculptures.

3 videocassettes