T. C. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of T. C. who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1922, the only child of a physician in a small village. She recounts her mother's death when she was five; being raised by her grandmother; cordial relations with non-Jews; attending a local Catholic school, then high school in Bratislava; expulsion from school in 1939 due to anti-Jewish laws; returning home; cruel treatment by Hlinka guards; deportation of the local Jews in 1942; their exemption due to her father's profession; losing her exemption when she was eighteen; a Catholic priest in Lysá pod Makytou hiding her for two years; returning home; her father losing his exemption in 1944; the priest hiding her with his housekeeper's family in Ilava for three months; returning home; deportation with her family (her father had remarried) to Sered; their transfer to Auschwitz three weeks later; her grandmother, step mother, and brother being selected for gassing; a high school friend giving her warm clothing; transfer to Freiberg; slave labor in an airplane factory; a German man giving her extra food; transport nine months later; escaping with two Polish women from the train near České Budějovice; telling locals they were fleeing from Soviet troops; receiving food and shelter; traveling to České Budějovice, Brno, then Bratislava with Soviet troops; protecting herself from rape by them; reunion with uncles, aunts, and her father who was terminally ill (he had survived Bergen-Belsen); marriage; a visit from the brother of one of the Polish women with whom she had escaped (she had died); and the births of her children. Ms. C. discusses the difficulty of conveying the brutality of her experiences, even to her children; attributing her survival to her youth, good health, and being deported so late, but mostly to luck; feelling lost and alone at times in the camps; and grieving most over the killing of her young, talented brother.

1 videocassette