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Rachel N. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2010) interviewed by Jaschael Pery,

Oral History | Fortunoff Collection ID: HVT-2010

Videotape testimony of Rachel N., who was born in Tomasów Mazowiecki, Poland in 1914. She recalls anti-Jewish quotas preventing her from attending university in Warsaw; studying nursing in Łódź; working for the district doctor in Brzeziny; German invasion; being forced to establish a separate Jewish hospital; ghettoization; marriage; public hangings of food smugglers; her husband's round-up (she never saw him again); clandestinely visiting her parents and sister in Tomasźow Mazowiecki; persuading a German soldier not to kill her father; returning to Brzeziny (she never saw her family again); transfer to the Łódź ghetto; working in the hospital; collecting children on Ḥayim Rumkowski's orders; privileged access to food as a nurse; treating Rumkowski's wife; living with her three sisters-in-law; deportation to Auschwitz; transfer to Stutthof; forced labor; sharing food with her sister-in-law; a brutal beating for helping other prisoners; being nursed by prisoners; a death march; boat transport to Neustadt in Holstein; execution of immobile prisoners by the Germans; liberation by British troops; working as a nurse for UNRRA; transfer to Lüebeck; working for the Joint in Hamburg caring for orphans; emigration to the United States in 1949; and marriage to a survivor from Kraków.

Author/Creator
N., Rachel, 1914-
Published
New York, N.Y. : A Living Memorial to the Holocaust-Museum of Jewish Heritage, 1992
Interview Date
February 6, 1992.
Locale
Poland
Brzeziny (Łódź)
Łódź
Tomaszów Mazowiecki (Poland)
Łódź (Poland)
Brzeziny (Łódź, Poland)
Neustadt in Holstein (Germany)
Lübeck (Germany)
Hamburg (Germany)
Language
English
Copies
2 copies: 3/4 in. dub; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
Cite As
Rachel N. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2010). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.