Maria S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Maria S., a Romani, who was born in Medzev, Czechoslovakia in 1929. She recounts her mother's death during her birth; living with her grandmother in Košice; deportation with her grandmother and local Jews to Komárno, then to Theresienstadt, Ravensbrück, and Buchenwald; slave labor; losing her wooden shoes and her grandmother obtaining another pair for her; her grandmother's death; frequently crying for her; being subjected to medical experiments; a Romani man giving her a potato (his wife and children were killed in Auschwitz); extreme debilitation from typhus; liberation; hospitalization; repatriation to Medzev with the man who had given her the potato (he later became her husband); reunion with her father; moving to Teplice; the births of two children; abandonment by her husband; having a house in a village; working in a porcelain factory for seventeen years; two subsequent marriages and widowhood; and finding her name in the records when visiting Theresienstadt. Mrs. S. discusses never having received compensation for her camp experiences and relations between different groups in the camps. She shows a photograph of her stepmother and stepsisters.

1 videocassette