Rose S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-653)

Videotape testimony of Rose S., who was born in Romania, the youngest of six children. She recalls that her father was a successful merchant; Hungarian occupation; all of her brothers and brothers-in-law being drafted into slave labor battalions; her father's death in 1943; having to support her siblings and their twelve children; ghettoization when she was twenty-one; smuggling food in from her village; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau after six weeks; horrendous conditions on the transport; separation from her family upon arrival; being compelled to give blood for wounded German soldiers despite her weakness; learning her family had been killed and cremated; forced labor in the kitchen; a beating after providing extra food for her cousins; transfer to Bergen-Belsen; liberation by British troops; recuperation in Sweden; the kindness of the Swedes; marriage; her son's birth; and emigration to the United States. She discusses learning one brother and brother-in-law had survived; wanting her children to know about her experiences; good and bad prisoner officials; and the shame and sadistic punishments inflicted in the camps.