Cecile H. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Cecile H., who was born in Erlangen, Germany in 1923. She recounts her father's ancestors were Moses and Felix Mendelssohn (Nazi policy categorized him as "three-quarters Jewish"); being raised as a Protestant; her father's death in 1930; not being allowed to join the female Nazi youth due to her Jewish ancestry; her half-brother and fiancé serving in the Wehrmacht (they both died); expulsion from school due to a suggestive photograph, not due to racial reasons; hospitalization in Altdorf for tuberculosis; attending university as a "guest student"; doing dissertation research in Prague; enjoying theater and socializing with Nazis; exemption from war labor due to ill health; liberation by United States troops; completing her dissertation; moving to Berlin in 1965; marriage to a Jew; founding the Mendelssohn-Gesellschaft; her career as a historian; and donating her and her husband's archive to the government. She discusses believing in collective responsibility rather than collective guilt; her own responsibility in this realm; and the fates of her and her husband's relatives during the war.

2 videocassettes