Jenny L. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Jenny L., who was born in Aleksinac, Yugoslavia in 1927, the younger of two children. She recounts a kind kindergarten teacher; moving to Belgrade; her father's military conscription in spring 1941; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; a public execution; her brother's escape to Italian-occupied Croatia; reporting to a German round-up; escaping when she saw her friend killed, leaving her mother and grandmother; traveling to an aunt's home in Niš (she worked for the underground); obtaining false papers; living with her former kindergarten teacher; hiding partisans and providing them with supplies; arrest by Bulgarian soldiers fifteen months later; interrogations and beatings; a guard giving her extra food and cigarettes; transfer to German custody; deportation to a labor camp; prisoners helping her escape; capture; deportation to Weiner Neustadt as a non-Jew; forced labor repairing radios; Allied bombings; transfer to Berlin in July 1944; slave labor in a factory; transfer to a Gestapo prison when hidden weapons were found in the factory; interrogation by a Serb collaborator; a German guard saving her from execution; release during an air raid; liberation by Soviet troops; attacks by Soviet soldiers; traveling with other Yugoslavs to Cottbus, Legnica, Katowice, and Lʹviv; returning with a fellow prisoner to Belgrade; efforts to recover family property; her father's return; reunion with her brother; working as a journalist; arrest in 1949 for telling a joke; interrogations and beatings by antisemitic police; transfer to a labor camp; release after thirty months; emigration to Israel; and her father joining her within a year. Ms. L. describes repression under Tito as her "breaking" point; considering suicide after her release; and her career in Israel.
Extent and Medium
9 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
- L., Jenny, -- 1927-
Corporate Bodies
- Wiener Neustadt (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Holocaust survivors.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Video tapes.
- Women.
- Suicide.
- Forced labor.
- Escapes.
- Forced labor -- Yugoslavia.
- False papers.
- Partisans.
- Hiding.
- Child survivors.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, Bulgarian.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Yugoslavia.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- Concentration camps -- Yugoslavia.
- Concentration camp inmates -- Yugoslavia -- Personal narratives.
- Political prisoners -- Yugoslavia.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German.
- Postwar effects.
- Bulgarian occupation.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Antisemitism -- Postwar.
- Postwar experiences.
Places
- Legnica (Poland)
- Katowice (Poland)
- Lʹviv (Ukraine)
- Belgrade (Serbia)
- Niš (Serbia)
- Berlin (Germany)
- Cottbus (Germany)
- Yugoslavia.
- Aleksinac (Serbia)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat