He?le?ne R. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of He?le?ne R., who was raised in Strasbourg, France. She describes participating in Zionist youth groups; her father's death in 1936; moving to Vichy in 1939 with her mother and brother; her brother's deportation (she received mail from him postmarked Monowitz), then her mother's in November 1943; hiding for seven months; resuming her job; imprisonment in Clermont-Ferrand in June 1944; transfer to Drancy in July; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; forming a group of French girls; selections, beatings, and hunger; transfer to a munitions factory in Kratzau; forcing the assembly line to stop as her form of resistance; liberation by Soviet troops on May 9, 1945; receiving identity documents from the mayor of Chrastave (Kratzau); traveling with her friends to Paris; learning her brother had perished; recuperation; reclaiming her mother's store in Vichy; and marriage to another survivor. Mrs. R. discusses the trauma in Drancy, then in Auschwitz, when she realized that she would never see her mother again; the importance of her group of friends; their relations with others in the camps; fantasizing about a normal future while working in Kratzau; sharing her experience with her children; trips to Poland; and speaking to students about the war years.
Extent and Medium
2 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
- R., Hélène.
Corporate Bodies
- Drancy (Concentration camp)
- Kratzau I (Concentration camp)
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Survivor-child relations.
- Postwar experiences.
- Mutual aid.
- Hiding.
- Concentration camps -- Sociological aspects.
- Zionist organizations.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Forced labor.
- Friendship.
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Passive resistance.
- Video tapes.
- Women.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust survivors.
Places
- Vichy (France)
- Strasbourg (France)
- Paris (France)
- Chrastava (Czech Republic)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat