Amanda S. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Amanda S., a Roman Catholic, who was born in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1923. She recalls living in Brussels; attending school in Paris; German invasion; briefly fleeing with her father to Limoges; her father hiding after refusing to cooperate with Germans; hiding Jewish friends; being recruited to hide Allied pilots; living under false papers; arrest in February 1944; observing her mother's arrest (two pilots and two Jews were found in her home); incarceration in Fresnes; torture; three months' solitary confinement; prisoners communicating through the plumbing; brief transfer to Romainville; deportation to Ravensbrück in April; slave labor, starvation, and beatings; not receiving packages because she was "Nacht und Nebel"; being subjected to medical experiments from which many died; hospitalization; her mother's death; train transport to Linz; a death march to Mauthausen; carrying her friend; a French man providing her with extra food which helped her survive; liberation by United States troops; assistance returning home from the Red Cross; staying at Hotel Lutetia; learning her father had been killed; placement in a sanitarium for six months in Chamonix; and her career as a flight attendant. Ms. S. discusses group relations in the camps; her mother's efforts to raise prisoner morale; not discussing her experiences until recently; and nightmares about her father.
Extent and Medium
8 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
- S., Amanda, -- 1923-
Corporate Bodies
- Mauthausen (Concentration camp)
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
- Centre pénitentiaire de Fresnes.
- Hotel Lutetia (Paris, France)
- Ravensbrück (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Human experimentation in medicine.
- Forced labor.
- Mothers and daughters.
- Postwar experiences.
- Postwar effects.
- Death marches.
- Concentration camps -- Sociological aspects.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Women.
- Video tapes.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German.
- Concentration camp inmates.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- France.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Belgian.
- Mutual aid.
- Hospitals in concentration camps.
- False papers.
- Rescuers.
- Aid by non-Jews.
Places
- Brussels (Belgium)
- Paris (France)
- Limoges (France)
- Linz (Austria)
- Chamonix-Mont-Blanc (France)
- Switzerland.
- Lausanne (Switzerland)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat