Rose J. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1392) interviewed by Alice Epstein and Elaine Tannenbaum,

Videotape testimony of Rose J., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1925. She recalls her family of nine children (she is the sole survivor); Vilna's cultural and religious life; her father's optimism resulting in unwillingness to flee to the Soviet Union; forced labor, hunger, smuggling, cultural events, and round-ups in the ghetto; and one sister's refusal to abandon her son to save herself. Mrs. J. tells of deportation to Latvia; forced labor and sabotaging products in Strazdenhof; smuggling food to children; prisoners killing an informant; transfer to Stutthof, then Dresden; work in an ammunition factory; Allied bombings; a dream about her mother; the death march to Czechoslovakia; and escape with others. She describes posing as a Lithuanian; liberation by American troops; taking revenge; organizing entertainment in displaced persons camps in Germany; marriage to a survivor in 1946; her son's birth in 1947; and emigration to the United States in 1950. Other topics include the lost potential of those killed (e.g. her nephew, a violinist for the Vilna Philharmonic); survival for even one day as a form of resistance; tremendous love for her children; sadness at raising them with no extended family; and attending the 1981 Gathering in Jerusalem.