Hanka K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-419) interviewed by Elaine Perlsweig and Ian Russ

Videotape testimony of Hanka K., who was born in Chełm, Poland in 1930. She recalls her traditional childhood; her parents' Zionist background; the outbreak of war; brief Soviet occupation; hiding during a pogrom; German invasion; her father's arrest during a round-up (she never saw him again); hiding with her mother and sister in a cellar; her mother's killing; escaping with her baby sister to the Rejowiec ghetto; hiding her sister while working as a maid; her sister's death; deportation to Majdanek, then Skarżysko-Kamienna, Częstochowa, and Bergen Belsen; witnessing cannibalism in Belsen; evacuation to several camps ending at Türkheim; stealing potatoes and sharing them with two friends from Skarżysko; disappearance of the German guards during a death march; liberation by United States troops; walking from Türkheim to Landsberg; recovering in a hospital in Bad Bergzabern; joining her friends in Stuttgart; and living in the Gunzenhausen UNRRA camp. Throughout the testimony, Mrs. K. discusses her state of mind, including her extreme loneliness and isolation after the deaths of her parents and sister, the importance of her two friends, and continuing fears resulting from the war years.