- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Leona K., who was born in Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą, Poland in 1926, one of five children. She recalls her large and close extended family; antisemitic policies at school; German invasion; she and her family visiting her married sister in Warsaw; ghettoization; their return to Nowe Miasto; ghettoization; working outside the ghetto as a maid for a German family; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in November 1942; remaining with two sisters and cousins when separated from her family; slave labor digging ditches in bitter cold; carrying the dead back to camp; learning of the gas chambers and crematoria; public hangings; transfer with her sisters to the Canada Kommando; eating food they found when sorting the clothing of those gassed; fasting on Yom Kippur; her sisters forcing her to work when she was ill so she would not be killed; seeing her brother and cousin from a distance; separation from her sisters in a selection; a German helping them reunite; transport in open train cars in January 1945; escaping with her sisters from a forced march; encountering United States troops who fed and cared for them in Schwerin; placement in Lübeck displaced persons camp; meeting her future husband; marriage; her older sister's emigration to Palestine; emigration to the United States with her sister, husband, and his relatives; and the births of her children. Ms. K. notes the great joy she receives from her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She shows photographs and a diamond that her husband's father had given to him before the war.
- Author/Creator
- K., Leona, 1926-
- Published
- New Haven, Conn. : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 2011
- Interview Date
- December 9, 2011.
- Locale
- Poland
Warsaw
Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą
Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą (Poland)
Warsaw (Poland)
- Cite As
- Leona K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4448). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Rudof, Joanne Weiner, interviewer.
Katz, Barbara Hadley, interviewer.
