Judith S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Judith S., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1938. She tells of sailing with her parents and grandfather on the St. Louis in May 1939; being refused landing permission in Cuba; disembarkation in Antwerp; living in a French town on the Spanish border; friendship with their landlady; incarceration in Gurs in 1942; hysteria when she was separated from her parents (she never saw them again); placement with the landlady (her grandfather was still there, but died shortly thereafter); attending school and church; being protected by the villagers (they knew she was Jewish); a loving relationship with the landlady; war's end; the traumatic separation from the landlady, her foster mother in Paris; living in an OSE camp; emigration to the United States in 1946 to join her uncle's family; their insistence that she abandon the church and cut ties with her foster mother in France; and marriage in 1958. Mrs. S. discusses her omnipresent sense of danger during wartime; difficulties adjusting to her uncle's orthodoxy and severing communications with her foster mother; emotional difficulties with issues of abandonment and separation; raising her children religiously; her own strong religious faith; and learning that her foster mother had hidden other Jews.

2 videocassettes