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Eliška K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3358) interviewed by Anna Lorencová,

Oral History | Fortunoff Collection ID: HVT-3358

Videotape testimony of Eliška K., who was born in Přerov, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1912. She describes her father's draft in 1914; attending Jewish, then Czech, school after the republic was established; antisemitic discrimination; studying at the Prague Conservatory; her brother, Gideon Klein, joining her; her mother joining them; German occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions; traveling to Vienna as a resistance courier; hiding people; her father's death in 1940; her sister's and brother-in-law's arrest; her brother's deportation to Theresienstadt in December 1941; deportation there with her mother on July 20, 1942; working in the children's sector; her brother continuing to compose and conduct music; deportation to Auschwitz with her mother in February 1944; separation upon arrival; learning her sister had perished; transfer to Kurzbach; slave labor digging trenches; the death march in January 1945; assistance from friends; their escape; traveling to Prochowice, Legnica, Görlitz, then Prague; obtaining false papers and shelter with assistance from František Halas; liberation by Soviet troops in May; and learning her brother had perished. Mrs. K. discusses feeling she could not go on, during and after the war; the importance of friends to her survival; and her efforts to obtain recognition and publication of her brother's music.

Author/Creator
K., Eliška, 1912-
Published
Prague, Czech Republic : Nadace Film & Sociologie, 1996
Interview Date
January 22, 1996.
Locale
Czech Republic
Austria
Přerov (Olomoucký kraj, Czech Republic)
Prague (Czech Republic)
Prochowice (Poland)
Legnica (Poland)
Görlitz (Görlitz, Germany)
Smíchov (Prague, Czech Republic)
Language
Czech
Copies
2 copies: Betacam SP dub; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
Cite As
Eliška K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3358). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.