Helena B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Helena B., a Catholic Romani, who was born in Rakovec nad Ondavou, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1921. She recounts that her father was not Romani; his death when she was three (she does not remember him); only three Romani households in the village; cordial relations with non-Romanies; marriage to a Romani when she was eighteen; the birth of one child prior to the war; her brother's military draft; his capture and imprisonment as a prisoner of war in Germany; deportation of all the Jews from her village; bringing food to partisans in nearby forests; German confiscation of all their livestock and food; the mayor not identifying her family as Romani to the Germans; Hlinka guards harassing and humiliating the other Romanies; her husband working as a musician; round up to an agricultural building by the Germans as the Soviets approached; giving birth to a child there; improved conditions after Soviet arrival; moving to the Czech Republic; caring for her husband's younger siblings, in addition to her six children, after his parents' deaths; working in a factory; and returning to Slovakia after twelve years, although her children remained in the Czech Republic.

1 videocassette