- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Esther K., who was born in Svatusa, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1915. She describes her Orthodox family; attending Hungarian gymnasium in Košice; marriage in 1937; her son's birth in 1938; her husband's service in the Czech, then Hungarian, militaries; Hungarian occupation; expropriation of their business; her husband's escape to Palestine; her second son's birth in 1940; moving to her parents' home; German occupation in March 1944; ghettoization with her family in Sátoraljaújhely; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her parents and children upon arrival on May 20 (she never saw them again); emotional numbness; devastation when separated from her sister; arranging to be with her sister in Birkenau; brutal slave labor; preventing her sister from committing suicide; their evacuation to Bergen-Belsen; transfer to Mühlhausen; slave labor in a factory; assistance from a German officer and a doctor; return to Bergen-Belsen; liberation by British troops; and her sister's death shortly thereafter. Mrs. K. recalls recovering in a hospital; returning to Svatusa in September 1945; reunion with her husband a year later; the births of her daughters; and emigrating to Israel in 1949, then to the United States in 1964. She discusses amazement that she survived such horrors and her continuing nightmares.
- Author/Creator
- K., Esther, 1915-
- Published
- New York, N.Y. : A Living Memorial to the Holocaust-Museum of Jewish Heritage, 1994
- Interview Date
- March 16, 1994.
- Locale
- Hungary
Sátoraljaújhely
Austria
Svatusa (Slovakia)
Košice (Slovakia)
- Cite As
- Esther K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2922). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Blinderman, Joni-Sue, interviewer.
