Maria M. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Maria M., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1919. She recalls her family's assimilation; attending medical school in Paris and Tours due to Polish quotas against Jews; visiting home in summer 1939; German invasion; her parents retrieving all their assets from the bank (this later saved their lives); ghettoization in 1940; working at the Jewish hospital; starvation, epidemics and deaths; her father working for the Joint; deportations beginning in July 1942; her father encouraging her and her mother to escape (they did not look Jewish); her mother's refusal to leave him; his failed suicide attempt so they would leave; informing them he had arranged for their escape in September; obtaining false papers from the Polish resistance; traveling to Zakopane to join her aunt and cousin who were living as non-Jews; their discovery, arrest, and execution; briefly living in Rytro; returning to Warsaw; her mother obtaining housekeeping jobs, some for non-Jews who knew she was Jewish; tutoring children in French; working for the underground; witnessing the Jewish uprising from outside the ghetto; the Polish uprising; forced relocation from Pruszko?w to Soko?o?w Go?rny; her mother tutoring in one family and she in another village; and liberation by Soviet troops in December.
Extent and Medium
6 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
- M., Maria, -- 1919-
Corporate Bodies
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
- HIAS (Agency)
Subjects
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Hospitals in Jewish ghettos.
- Women.
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Jews -- Poland -- Warsaw.
- Jewish ghettos.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Poland.
- Mothers and daughters.
- Escapes.
- Forced labor.
- Hiding.
- False papers.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Postwar experiences.
Places
- Warsaw (Poland) -- History -- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943.
- Warsaw (Poland)
- Paris (France)
- Warsaw (Poland) -- History -- Uprising, 1944.
- Poland.
- Rytro (Poland)
- Pruszków (Województwo Mazowieckie, Poland)
- Tours (France)
- Zakopane (Poland)
- Buenos Aires (Argentina)
- Warsaw ghetto.
- Sokołów Górny (Poland)
- Łódź (Poland)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat