Sara L. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1928) interviewed by Razyl Kalifowicz-Waletsky

Videotape testimony of Sara L., who was born in Sokole, Poland in 1922. She recalls a happy childhood; a very orthodox home; moving to Białystok; increasing antisemitism in 1937; brief German occupation in 1939; Soviet occupation; German invasion; one brother fleeing to the Soviet Union; another brother's round-up (she never saw him again); ghettoization; forced factory labor; hiding during round-ups; her mother's deportation (she never saw her again); the ghetto's liquidation; a selection with her brother and father; being chosen for labor (she never saw her father or brother again); train transport to Majdanek; suicides of several women en route; transfer to Bliżyn; forced labor as a seamstress; contracting typhus; receiving food from a male prisoner; transfer to Auschwitz, then Kratzau; slave labor in a munitions factory; liberation by Soviet troops in May 1945; returning to Białystok; antisemitic violence; marriage; her son's birth; illegally entering Germany; her second son's birth in Munich; learning her brother had survived in the Soviet Union; and emigrating to the United States. Mrs. L. discusses the importance to her survival of taking initiative (volunteering for work, stealing food, etc.), maintaining hope, and mutual support among prisoners.