Cecile J. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Cecile J., who was born in Anderlecht , Belgium in 1931, one of three children. She recalls moving to Woluwe?-Saint-Pierre; her family's assimilated lifestyle; attending public school; antisemitic insults; vacations in Ostend; German invasion in May 1940; briefly fleeing to Lille; memorizing addresses of relatives in the United States; expulsion from school and wearing the star; round-ups in September 1942; her parents hiding her younger brother in a sanitarium; their arrest in January 1943 when she and her older sister were not home; being hidden by neighbors, then in a hospital; placement on a baron's estate (he was in the underground) in Vone?che, then in a convent in Heverlee; attending school and mass; she and her sister requesting to be baptized; liberation in September 1944; placement with a Jewish family in Brussels; reunion with her brother; placement with her sister in a Jewish orphanage; resuming her Jewish identity; emigration with her siblings to join their relatives in the United States in 1948; and marriage to a French "hidden child" in 1955. Ms. J. discusses using humor to cope with privation in the convent; learning her parents and most of her relatives had been killed in Auschwitz; attending the Hidden Child Conference and an orphanage reunion in 1983; participating in a local Hidden Child group; and visiting Belgium with her children. She shows photographs and documents.
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.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- J., Cecile, -- 1931-
Corporate Bodies
- Hidden Child Foundation/ADL.
Subjects
- Identification (Religion)
- Convents.
- Orphanages -- Belgium.
- Christian converts from Judaism.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Child survivors.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Hiding.
- Women.
- Video tapes.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- Sisters.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Belgium.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Postwar experiences.
Places
- Belgium.
- Anderlecht (Belgium)
- Brussels (Belgium)
- Ostend (Belgium)
- WoluweĚ-Saint-Pierre (Belgium)
- VoneĚche (Belgium)
- Lille (France)
- Heverlee (Belgium)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat