- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Erna R., who was born in Żywiec, Poland in 1922. She recalls being one of two Jewish families; attending high school in Kraków; anti-Semitic incidents; German invasion; forced labor; ghettoization; hunger, deportations, and mass killings; the demoralizing effect of family separations; liquidation of the ghetto in 1943; her family's transfer to Płaszów; working in the Madritsch factory; truck transport of all children out of Płaszów, including her eleven year old brother (they were all killed); her father's and mother's deportations; frequent hangings and shootings; and transport to Auschwitz in September 1944. Mrs. R. describes the dehumanizing reception procedures; strategies for remaining with her sisters; transfer to Gundelsdorf in January 1945; help from an SS guard; transfer to Zwodau; resisting unwanted homosexual advances; a death march; escaping with help from a local woman; and liberation by American troops, whose chaplain, Rabbi Eugene Lipman, became a friend. She recounts working as an interpreter for the United Nations; marrying a man whose mother she knew in Płaszów; and writing a book about her experience. She reflects on her belief in the importance of prayer and miracles and the sisters staying together, and she reads her poem about survival.
- Author/Creator
- R., Erna, 1922-
- Published
- Peabody, Mass. : Holocaust Center of the Jewish Federation of the North Shore, 1989
- Interview Date
- September 25, 1989.
- Locale
- Poland
Kraków
Żywiec (Poland)
Kraków (Poland)
- Cite As
- Erna R. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1381). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Umlas, Evelyn, interviewer.
Fishman, Ellen, interviewer.
- Notes
-
The Survivor in us all ; a memoir of the Holocaust / Erna F. Rubinstein. -- Hamden, Conn. : Archon Books, 1983.
