Gerda H. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1029)

Videotape testimony of Gerda H., who was born in Ansbach, Germany in 1922. She recounts her father was a kosher butcher; attending lyceum after documenting her father's World War I service; expulsion due to additional anti-Jewish laws; attending a Jewish school in Berlin; moving with her family to Munich after Kristallnacht; her father's emigration to England; being unable to join him once war began; her sister being sent to nursing school in Frankfurt and she in Berlin; learning her mother had been deported (she never saw her again); occasionally seeing her sister (she was working in a Berlin factory); their separate deportations (she never saw her again); working as a nurse in Theresienstadt; friendship with another nurse; volunteering with her friend for a transport to Switzerland despite their doubts about its destination; arrival in Switzerland; hearing from her father; learning about gassings and death camps in 1946; realizing her mother's and sister's fates; and emigration to the United States. Ms. H. discusses the importance of luck to her survival; feeling redeemed by having children and grandchildren; remaining Jewish despite questioning why God did not save the Jews; and guilt arising from her survival. She shows camp artifacts.