- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Miriam V., who was born in a village in Hungary in 1928, one of six sisters. She recounts her family's move to Miskolc in 1932; attending Jewish school; participating in Betar; cordial relations with non-Jews; draft of men into Hungarian slave labor battalions; German invasion in 1944; forced labor; transfer to the Miskolc ghetto; her father's deportation (she never saw him again); deportation with her mother and sisters to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation from her mother; transfer with four sisters to Allendorf (she never saw her other sister or mother again); slave labor in a munitions factory; assistance from a German guard; working on nearby farms; smuggling food to share with others; composing and singing songs and other cultural activities; brief hospitalization; fasting on Yom Kippur and not eating bread during Passover; a forced march; abandonment by the guards; liberation by United States troops; living in Niedergrenzbach; contacts with American Jewish soldiers in Ziegenhain; three sisters returning to Hungary; traveling with her other sister to the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp; assistance from the Jewish Brigade; sitting with David Ben-Gurion when he visited; relations between Zionist groups; failed attempts to cross national borders en route to illegal emigration to Palestine; staying in Düsseldorf; returning to Bergen-Belsen; two more sisters joining her; training for emigration to Palestine in Gersfeld, then in Landsberg; traveling to Milan; living in refugee camps in Rivoli, Ladispoli, and Bari; illegal emigration to Palestine by ship; interdiction by the British; incarceration on Cyprus; joining the Haganah; guarding Golda Meir when she visited; release; marriage; her children's births; and one son's death in 1977. Ms. V. discusses the importance of the sisters to each others' survival; events that challenged her and others' faith; the sisters shielding each other from postwar depressions; kibbutz life; and a reunion of Allendorf survivors. She shows photographs.
- Author/Creator
- V., Miriam, 1928-
- Published
- Tel Aviv, Israel : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1999
- Interview Date
- November 11, November 18, and December 16, 1999.
- Locale
- Hungary
Miskolc
Miskolc (Hungary)
Niedergrenzbach (Germany)
Ziegenhain (Germany : Kreis)
Düsseldorf (Germany)
Gersfeld (Germany)
Milan (Italy)
Rivoli (Italy)
Ladispoli (Italy)
Bari (Italy)
Cyprus
Palestine
- Cite As
- Miriam V. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4154). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in Hebrew.
