Colette T. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Colette T., who was born in France in 1932. She describes growing up in Rouen in a very assimilated family (she did not realize she was Jewish); her father's service in the French military; fleeing to Agen with her mother and brother after German invasion; learning her father was a prisoner of war; returning to Rouen; shame at having to wear the yellow star; an empathic teacher; arrest with her mother and brother on January 15, 1943 despite their status as family of a war prisoner; deportation to Drancy; transfer to Beaune-la-Rolande; return to Drancy; a rabbi who organized classes, her first knowledge of Judaism; other adults organizing math lessons; deportation in a passenger train to Bergen-Belsen on May 1, 1944; starvation, appells and beatings; learning about Auschwitz from transferred prisoners; evacuation by train; liberation by Soviet troops; and, with her brother, caring for their mother when she had typhus. Mrs. T. discusses intergroup relations and her family relations in the camps.

3 videocassettes