Sofia L. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Sofia L., who was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1939 to a Jewish mother and Orthodox Serbian father. She recounts her father's involvement with progressive causes; her mother meeting him when he was imprisoned with her brothers (they were leftists as well); their marriage in 1938; his execution as a communist in 1941; her maternal grandmother moving in with them after her father's death; her grandmother's deportation, then her mother's (she never saw them again); the soldiers leaving her behind with her mother's assistant because she was so ill they thought she would die shortly; her mother's assistant's mother taking her as her own child; the entire neighborhood hiding her identity; learning her uncles were killed as partisans; postwar assistance as a war orphan; learning she was Jewish; participating in a Jewish youth group (with Tugomir B. among others), which provided a positive identity; becoming a teacher; teaching in Banovo Polje, then Aleksandrovac; marriage; her son's birth; living in Požarevac; moving to Belgrade; and doing social work for the Jewish community. Ms. L. notes not feeling like an orphan because of her adoptive mother and pride in both her Jewish and Serb heritages.

2 videocassettes