Malka S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Malka S., who was born in Halmeu, Romania in 1922, the second of eight children. She recalls speaking Yiddish at home; celebrating Shavuot; Hungarian occupation in 1940; being sent to Budapest; marriage; returning home due to her pregnancy; German occupation in March 1944; her husband joining her; ghettoization in Nagyszollos (presently Vynohradiv); her daughter's birth; deportation to Auschwitz; a prisoner telling them to give the baby to her mother; selection with two sisters (she never saw her parents, daughter, or husband again); forced labor; starvation; a French worker sharing food with them; a privileged kitchen job; a beating for smuggling food; her younger sister's transfer; extermination of the Zigeunerlager (Gypsy Lager); fasting on Yom Kippur; help from an SS woman; the Sonderkommando uprising; the January 1945 death march; holding her sister's hand; train transport to Ravensbru?ck; slave labor for Siemens; transfer to Neustadt-Glewe; liberation by British, then Soviet troops; wandering for weeks; traveling to Berlin, Prague, then Budapest; reunion with her in-laws; learning her husband and several brothers had perished; reunion with her third sister in Halmeu; returning to Budapest; traveling to Trieste with a Zionist group; legal emigration to Palestine in 1947; marriage; and the births of two sons. Ms. S. discusses pervasive painful memories; becoming less religious; and loving Jewish tradition.

2 videocassettes