Elisabeth K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1474) interviewed by A. King and Gerda Haas

Videotape testimony of Elisabeth K., a German non-Jew, who was born in Insterburg, Germany (presently Cherni︠a︡khovsk, Russia) in approximately 1931. She recalls her father was a career military officer; moving to Berlin in 1935, then to a village in 1937; her parents' "Prussian" lack of communication and formal child rearing (she learned not to ask questions); playing with Jewish children; observing destruction after Kristallnacht; learning her beloved Jewish pediatrician had committed suicide; frequent marching and the boredom of Hitler Youth meetings; the focus on girls as producers of future soldiers; seeing her father only on Christmas; silence about the Holocaust after the war; marriage to an American Jew; and emigration to the United States in 1955. Ms. K. discusses her parents' snobbishness which resulted in her mother not listening to Hitler and no discussion of antisemitism; the lack of questioning when the Jews and Romanies disappeared; believing her parent knew something about the Holocaust since her father was stationed in Warsaw and her mother visited him there; and her older sister's refusal to talk about the topic.