- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Hanka L., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1925. She recalls her close, extended family; celebrating Jewish holidays; attending Jewish school; German invasion; Germans looting her parents' store; standing on the food line with her brother because they did not "look Jewish"; ghettoization; crowding, starvation, and frequent deaths; clandestine schools and cabarets (the black humor raised their spirits); forced factory labor; reciting the seder while hiding with her brother during a round-up for deportation; her father's and brother's deaths; volunteering with her mother for deportation to Auschwitz; total confusion upon arrival; fasting on Yom Kippur; torturous appels; separation from her mother, aunt and one cousin (she never saw them again); transfer with her cousin to a camp in Czechoslovakia; assistance from French workers; liberation by Soviet troops in May 1945; exacting revenge upon two former guards by shaving their heads; traveling to Ostrava and Prague with assistance from Beriḥah; living in a displaced persons camp in Salzburg with assistance from HIAS; marriage to a survivor; and emigration to Canada, then the United States. Mrs. L. discusses the importance to her survival of bonds with fellow prisoners; a recent visit to Poland; erecting gravestones for her father and brother; and discomfort that Auschwitz was a tourist attraction.
- Author/Creator
- L., Hanka, 1925-
- Published
- New York, N.Y. : A Living Memorial to the Holocaust-Museum of Jewish Heritage, 1992
- Interview Date
- March 9, 1992.
- Locale
- Poland
Łódź
Łódź (Poland)
Ostrava (Czech Republic)
Prague (Czech Republic)
Canada
- Cite As
- Hanka L. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2034). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Blinderman, Joni-Sue, interviewer.
