Regina R. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1194) interviewed by Bonnie Dwork and Lisa Kaplan

Videotape testimony of Regina R., who was born in Vienna, Austria and grew up in Šamorín, Czechoslovakia. She recounts her comfortable childhood; attending school in Bratislava; teaching in Duna Szerdahely in 1937; Hungarian occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions; teaching at a Jewish school in Senec beginning in 1938; her father hiding Jews; learning that her brother had been killed in Budapest; working on a farm thinking that would offer her protection; forced transfer with her family to Nagy-Magyar (now Rastice) and Duna Szerdahely in 1944; separation from her mother and cousins upon arrival at Auschwitz; forced labor in Płaszów, then Augsburg; and liberation by United States troops. Mrs. R. describes her recuperation; reunion with her father in Samorin in 1945; learning that no other family members had survived; marriage; her daughter's birth; emigration to Israel in 1949, then to the United States seven years later. She discusses the psychological impact of anti-Jewish restrictions after Hungarian occupation; her bond with the Jewish children she taught from 1938 to 1944; the importance of friendship to her survival; the difficulty of sharing these experiences with her children; and her "scars" resulting from the Holocaust. She comments on the book "Elli," written by a friend from Samorin.