Eva M. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Eva M., who was born in Offenburg, Germany in 1931, the youngest of three sisters. She recounts cordial relations with non-Jews; holidays in Bad Du?rrheim; anti-Jewish restrictions with the rise of Nazism; boarding with a family to attend a Jewish school in Freiburg; her oldest sister contracting polio; her father's deportation to Dachau in November 1938; his release based on his leaving the country; his emigration to England; moving to Munich; placement of her sick sister in a children's home (they never saw her again); returning to Offenburg; deportation with her mother and other sister to Gurs in October 1940; singing in a choir there; assistance from the Red Cross; transfer a year later to Rivesaltes; release with her sister to an OSE children's home; the traumatic parting from her mother (she was deported and killed); being hidden in a convent, then returned to the children's home; communications from their father through a friend in Switzerland; being smuggled with her sister via Annemasse to Switzerland in April 1943; joining their father in England after the war; attending school; marriage to a survivor; her sister's emigration to the United States; and the birth of three children. Ms. M. discusses their German maid who helped them throughout the war; receiving photographs and documents from the maid, including her oldest sister's diary; visiting her; her children's and her sister's daughter's interest in her experiences; writing about them with a co-author; and speaking in German schools. She shows photographs, documents, and the book.
Extent and Medium
3 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony cannot be used for commercial purposes.
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.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- M., Eva, -- 1931-
Corporate Bodies
- Rivesaltes (Concentration camp)
- Gurs (Concentration camp)
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
- World Union OSE.
Subjects
- Women.
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Hiding.
- Postwar experiences.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Concentration camps -- Songs and music.
- Orphanages -- France.
- Convents.
- Sisters.
- Mothers and daughters.
- Orphanages -- Switzerland.
- Child survivors.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
Places
- Munich (Germany)
- Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany)
- Switzerland.
- Annemasse (France)
- Germany.
- Offenburg (Germany)
- Bad DuĚrrheim (Germany)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat