Esther B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Esther B., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1928, the youngest of three children. She recounts her family's secularism; her father's leadership position in the Bund; attending a Bund school; antisemitic harassment; German invasion; one brother fleeing to the Soviet zone (she never saw him again); her father fleeing after a warning from his pro-Nazi friend (she never saw him again); ghettoization; attending a ghetto school; eating at public kitchens funded by the Joint; participating in SKIF, the Bund youth group; her mother's hospitalization; hiding during round-ups; forced labor; her brother's deportation; deportation with her mother to Auschwitz/Birkenau; their separation upon arrival (she never saw her again); transfer to Hambu?hren; slave labor clearing bombing rubble; singing and reciting poetry with others to maintain hope; a death march to Bergen-Belsen; illness resulting in loss of consciousness; liberation by British troops; many deaths; transfer to Malmo?, Sweden to recuperate; living in a Bundist group home; learning her brother was alive; emigration to join him in England in 1947; working in a Yiddish theater; marriage; and the births of two children. Ms. B. discusses her immediate impulse to share her story, but the reluctance of others to hear it; continuing to stockpile food as a result of her experiences; trying not to impose her sorrow on her children, although they told her they were aware of it; and recently visiting Poland with her family. She shows photographs.

5 videocassettes