- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Helena B., a non-Jew, who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1920. She recalls her family's history of socialist activism; cordial relations with assimilated Jews; friendship with a girl from a Hasidic family; her father's open opposition to antisemitism resulting in his job termination; German invasion; humiliating treatment of Jews by German soldiers; visiting friends in the ghetto; observing starving children, corpses on the street, and lack of sanitation; providing shelter for Jews, some of whom were later arrested and killed; her parents, fearing informants, sending her to Dęblin; membership in Związek Walki Młodych (a leftist organization); assisting the ZOB (Jewish Fighting Organization) during the ghetto uprising; providing shelter, false papers, and medical care to her Jewish friend when she was wounded; her father's arrest; connecting her Jewish friends with Armia Ludowa; losing an arm during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944; liberation; and hospitalization in Kraków. Mrs. B. discusses differences between assimilated and observant Jews; maintaining contacts with her friends in Israel; harassment by Communist security police due to her Israeli contacts; and receiving the "Righteous Among Nations" medal in Israel in 1985. Mrs. B. discusses her book and many leaders of the ZOB.
- Author/Creator
- B., Helena, 1920-
- Published
- Warsaw, Poland : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1994
- Interview Date
- July 10, 1994.
- Locale
- Poland
Warsaw
Warsaw (Poland)
Dęblin (Warsaw, Poland)
Kraków (Poland)
- Cite As
- Helena B. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3164). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Sobelman, Michel, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in Polish.
Related publication: Mur miał dwie strony / Helena Balicka-Kozłowska. -- Warszawa : Wydawn. Ministerstwa Obrony Narodowej, c1958.
Related publication: Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto fighter : the past within me / Simha Rotem (Kazik); translated from the Hebrew by Barbara Harshav. -- New Haven : Yale University Press, c1994.
