Valerie F. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Valerie F., who was born in Mukacheve, Czechoslovakia in 1926. She recounts her comfortable, happy childhood; her family's orthodoxy; Hungarian occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions; one brother's draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion; his return in January 1944; German invasion; ghettoization; her father buying them false papers; one sister and brother escaping; her escape being cancelled when her companion refused to go; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in May; remaining with her mother and other relatives; keeping their spirits up discussing their pasts, futures, and her mother's recipes ("cooking"); transfer to Unterleuss in September; improved conditions; slave labor in a factory; her mother smuggling food to her from the kitchen; receiving extra food from a guard; observing Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur; abandonment by the guards on April 12; transfer to Bergen-Belsen; lice infestation; becoming ill; liberation by British troops; transfer to Malmö, then Göteborg; learning her father and brother had survived; reunion with them in Prague; and emigration to the United States in 1948. Ms. F. discusses details of prewar life; the importance to her survival of being with her mother and relatives; her art; and a recent trip to Auschwitz. She shows photographs.

4 videocassettes