Kazimiera B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Kazimiera B., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1918, an only child. Ms. B. notes her assimilated household; involvement in communism from age fourteen leading to school expulsions and brief imprisonment in 1936; university studies in Warsaw starting in 1937; antisemitism; returning to Łódź with her mother on August 31, 1939; German invasion; traveling to Warsaw with her parents; their return to Łódź; illegally entering Soviet-occupied territory with her parents; attending school in Lʹviv while her parents taught in Białystok; German invasion in June 1941; working in a children's home; leaving for an unsuccessful attempt to unite with her parents; returning to Lʹviv, then Warsaw; being smuggled into the ghetto; joining a Polish workers' organization; working in a Jewish orphanage; hiding during round-ups; the underground arranging her escape with another woman; living with a Polish family; working as a courier for the Polish workers' party; dying her hair blond to pass as a Pole; arrest as a Polish resistant in October 1942; imprisonment in Pawiak; not revealing her identity during beatings over several days; transfer with other Polish women in January 1943 to Majdanek; the women in her group exerting power within the prisoner hierarchy; assignment to the sewing workshop; receiving Red Cross packages; friends sharing packages they received from home; public hanging of a Jewish escapee; organized cultural activities within her group; bonding with communists and with two other Jews also posing as Poles in her group; everyone trying to help child prisoners; depression resulting from her privileged position compared to the Jews; deciding with a Jewish friend to join the Jews; and a Polish friend convincing them not to reveal themselves in order not to aid the Germans.

48 videocassettes