Eva T. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Eva T., who was born near Bereg, Hungary in 1932, an only child. She recounts moving to Mukacheve in 1938 when her father lost his position due to anti-Jewish laws; attending the Hebrew gymnasium; her father's employer offering to hide them in Budapest; her parents declining, in order not to abandon her father's stepfather; ghettoization; refusing the same employer's offer to hide her; deportation to Auschwitz; a Polish prisoner advising her to say she was sixteen and not sit; separation from her father; an SS woman advising the haircutters not to shave her blond hair; seeing her father through a fence and throwing him bread (she never saw him again); learning of the gas chambers and crematoria; others hiding her during selections; she and her mother supporting each other; clandestinely joining her mother's group for transfer; slave labor digging anti-tank trenches; recuperating from typhus; receiving extra food from German women; a death march in January 1945; escaping with her mother and another woman; finding food in an abandoned town; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to Częstochowa; staying three weeks with a poor Polish family; arriving in Mukacheve in April; learning her father had been killed; reunion with cousins; traveling to Bratislava; completing school, then art school; marriage; a breakdown due to her experiences; and the births of her children. Ms. T. notes sharing her experiences with her fiancé prior to their marriage, and not again until now; her children not knowing she was Jewish; attributing her survival to being with her mother, luck, and coincidences; her sense of being deformed; and physical ailments due to her experiences.

2 videocassettes