- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Helga K., who was born in Cologne, Germany in 1922. She recalls her family's comfortable, middle-class life in Godesberg; attending church; Nazi ascent to power; learning her father was half-Jewish and her mother Jewish; her family's baptism in 1933; antisemitic measures; expulsion from school; her parents' futile efforts to emigrate; her father's arrest and release during Kristallnacht; her brother's emigration to the United States; her emigration to England in July 1939 to work as a domestic; the outbreak of war; internment as an enemy alien; learning of her father's suicide; loneliness and isolation; war's end; applying for work in Germany to try to find her mother (she had perished); working in the American censorship office in Germany, then as an interpreter in Nuremberg for the war crime trials in 1946; meeting her future husband; and emigration to the United States. Mrs. K. discusses the defendants' absence of remorse at the trials; the importance of standing up for moral issues; her strong ethnic Jewish identity; her brother's identity as a Christian; discussing her past with her children; frequent trips to Germany; and increased understanding of the Holocaust and her bereavement following her son's death. She shows photographs and documents.
- Author/Creator
- K., Helga, 1922-
- Published
- New York, N.Y. : A Living Memorial to the Holocaust-Museum of Jewish Heritage, 1993
- Interview Date
- November 9, 1993.
- Locale
- Germany
Nuremberg
England
Cologne (Germany)
Bad Godesberg (Bonn, Germany)
- Cite As
- Helga K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2918). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Sicular, Lilian, interviewer.
Strochlic, Kathy, interviewer.
