Gerda and Samuel A. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Gerda and Samuel A. Gerda A. was born in Vienna, Austria in 1928. She recalls expulsion from school; antisemitic harassment; her father's decision that the family emigrate to Shanghai, against her mother's wishes; their arrival in October 1938; her father establishing a business; deterioration of conditions after Pearl Harbor; ghettoization in Hongkew; transfer to the Kadoorie school; positive contacts with Horace Kadoorie; rampant diseases resulting from lack of sanitation and hunger; the Jews establishing a theater, hospital, and athletic teams; difficult relations with the Japanese commander of the ghetto; and learning after the war that most of her family in Europe had been killed. Samuel A. was born in approximately 1914. He recounts emigrating from Vienna to Shanghai via Naples; learning English and Chinese; he and his father establishing businesses; training as a tool and die maker; and privation in the ghetto. Mr. and Mrs. A. discuss learning after the war of the extermination of the Jews in Europe; realizing how fortunate they had been despite their hardships; relations between the Jews who had arrived in Shanghai earlier with the new émigrés, as well as with the Chinese and Japanese; assisting family members leave Shanghai after the communist takeover in 1949; and the strong bond among the Jews who had been in Shanghai during the war.

2 videocassettes