- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Ellen H., who was born in a small town in Czechoslovakia in 1924. She recalls her family's affluence; attending Hebrew gymnasium in Ungvár with two sisters and a brother; Hungarian occupation; antisemitic restrictions; German invasion in 1944; orders for forced relocation to Ungvár; a neighbor hiding her and one sister; deciding to join their family; ghettoization in a brick factory for six weeks; deportation to Auschwitz; her older sister sending her child with her mother, not knowing it was to the gas chamber; remaining with her two sisters; not recognizing each other after their heads were shaved; transfer two days later to Kaiserwald; slave labor digging ditches and mending uniforms; receiving extra food from civilian workers; never revealing they were sisters in order to stay together; transfer by boat to Stutthof, then by truck to dig trenches; receiving extra food because her older sister was chosen as Lagerälteste; praying on holidays; caring for her sick friend; extra food due to her other sister's job as a maid for the SS; a death march in January 1945; liberation by Soviet troops; hitchhiking to Warsaw; asking American POWs to contact relatives in the United States; returning home; learning neighbors had looted their property; living in her sister's house in Ungvár; attending medical school in Prague for a year; joining relatives in the United States who treated them like their own children; marriage; and raising two daughters. She shows photographs.
- Author/Creator
- H., Ellen, 1924-
- Published
- Mahwah, N.J. : Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 1994
- Interview Date
- May 13, 1994.
- Locale
- Ukraine
Uz︠h︡horod
Poland
Uz︠h︡horod (Ukraine)
Czechoslovakia
Warsaw (Poland)
Prague (Czech Republic)
- Cite As
- Ellen H. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2729). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Kaplan, Raymond, interviewer.
