- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Cecile J., who was born in Anderlecht , Belgium in 1931, one of three children. She recalls moving to Woluwé-Saint-Pierre; her family's assimilated lifestyle; attending public school; antisemitic insults; vacations in Ostend; German invasion in May 1940; briefly fleeing to Lille; memorizing addresses of relatives in the United States; expulsion from school and wearing the star; round-ups in September 1942; her parents hiding her younger brother in a sanitarium; their arrest in January 1943 when she and her older sister were not home; being hidden by neighbors, then in a hospital; placement on a baron's estate (he was in the underground) in Vonêche, then in a convent in Heverlee; attending school and mass; she and her sister requesting to be baptized; liberation in September 1944; placement with a Jewish family in Brussels; reunion with her brother; placement with her sister in a Jewish orphanage; resuming her Jewish identity; emigration with her siblings to join their relatives in the United States in 1948; and marriage to a French “hidden child” in 1955. Ms. J. discusses using humor to cope with privation in the convent; learning her parents and most of her relatives had been killed in Auschwitz; attending the Hidden Child Conference and an orphanage reunion in 1983; participating in a local Hidden Child group; and visiting Belgium with her children. She shows photographs and documents.
- Author/Creator
- J., Cecile, 1931-
- Published
- New York, N.Y. : A Living Memorial to the Holocaust-Museum of Jewish Heritage, 1993
- Interview Date
- January 21, 1993.
- Locale
- Belgium
Brussels (Belgium)
Anderlecht (Belgium)
Woluwé-Saint-Pierre (Belgium)
Ostend (Belgium)
Lille (France)
Vonêche (Belgium)
Heverlee (Belgium)
- Cite As
- Cecile J. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2526). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Rappaport, Naomi, interviewer.
