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Ilona G. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2421) interviewed by Henry M. Strage,

Oral History | Fortunoff Collection ID: HVT-2421

Videotape testimony of Ilona G., who was born in Putnok, Hungary in 1921. She recalls her family's comfortable life; their orthodoxy; attending a Jewish school until age ten, then a secular school; studying languages in Czechoslovakia for a year; learning dressmaking; deportation with her family in 1941 as non-Hungarian citizens; an officer verifying their Hungarian citizenship at the border; returning home; her sister's marriage; draft of her father and brother-in-law into a Hungarian slave labor battalion in 1940; German invasion in 1944; deportation with her family to Auschwitz (her grandfather died en route); encountering cousins; remaining with friends from her town; slave labor; encountering her brother-in-law; observing Rosh ha-Shannah and Yom Kippur with her group; transfer to Mühlhausen in October; slave labor in a munitions factory; Germans throwing them extra food; transfer to Bergen-Belsen in March 1945; liberation by British troops; assistance from the Red Cross; transfer to Stockholm; recuperating in a convalescent home; learning her brother was alive; retuning to Putnok to be with him; marriage; living in Miskolc; her daughter's birth in 1957; and emigration from Hungary in 1957. She shows photographs.

Author/Creator
G., Ilona, 1921-
Published
London, England : British Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1993
Interview Date
February 17, 1993.
Locale
Hungary
Putnok (Hungary)
Budapest (Hungary)
Stockholm (Sweden)
Miskolc (Hungary)
Language
English
Copies
2 copies: 3/4 in. dub; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
Cite As
Ilona G. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2421). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.