Jenny R. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Jenny R., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1919 to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother. She recounts her mother's death in 1923; placement in a children's home where she was very unhappy; returning to her father; expulsion from school in 1933 due to anti-Jewish laws, although she did not consider herself Jewish; her father's arrest in summer 1933; visiting him in prison; his transfer to a concentration camp, then his release; difficulty obtaining and keeping jobs due to racial laws; having to prove that her mother was an "Aryan"; rumors of gas chambers and killing of Jews; her father's deportation to Theresienstadt in 1944; sending him packages; receiving postcards from him; forced labor in a factory, then clearing bombing rubble; evacuation to Treptow; liberation by Soviet troops; returning home; her father's return; continuing hardships and antisemitism; and obtaining German citizenship in 1954. Ms. R. notes receiving reparations for her father in 1962 after his death, and persistent fears resulting from her experiences. She shows photographs and documents and reads from a journal she kept during the war.
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., Jenny, -- 1919-
Subjects
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Women.
- Orphanages -- Germany.
- Jews -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- Germany.
- Children of interfaith marriage.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- Nuremberg laws.
- Child survivors.
- Forced labor.
- Identification (Religion)
- Postwar experiences.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Antisemitism -- Postwar.
- Postwar effects.
Places
- Germany.
- Treptow (Berlin, Germany)
- Berlin (Germany)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat