Rita L. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2256) interviewed by Susan Millen and Lucille B. Ritvo,

Videotape testimony of Rita L., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1932. She describes her wealthy, assimilated parents; German invasion; moving to the "small" ghetto; attending an illegal school; corpses in the streets becoming routine; family contacts with Janusz Korczak; escape to an uncle in Klimontów; and fleeing to L'viv with her mother in 1942, having learned all Jews were to be deported (she never saw her father again). Mrs. L. recounts living with her non-Jewish governess's sister; moving when threatened by blackmailers; her mother working as a servant for a German family, then in a German officers' club; attending a convent school where the priest guessed she was Jewish and gave her baptismal papers; becoming an ardent Catholic; liberation by Soviet troops in the summer of 1944; moving to Łódź; participating in a Zionist youth group; learning of American relatives through the Joint; and emigrating to Paris in 1945, then the United States in 1950. She relates her continuing interest in Zionism; reluctance to discuss her experiences with her children; changing this attitude due to participation in the Hidden Children Foundation; and a visit to Poland with the Foundation in 1993.