- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Helga G., who was born in Berlin in 1929 to a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother who had converted. She recalls futile efforts in the 1930s to emigrate due to anti-Jewish laws; her father fleeing to Italy; moving with her mother to Krosno Odrzańskie; attending school; joining her father; illegally entering France in 1938 following the introduction of Italian antisemitic laws; living in Nice; attending school and learning French; the outbreak of war; her father's French military conscription; incarceration with her mother in Gurs; Spanish POWs giving the Jewish children extra food and candy; their release; returning to Nice; benign Italian occupation; her father's return; hiding in a village in the Alps; staying briefly in a Red Cross children's home; German occupation in 1943; being sent to hide in a children's home in Annemasse, then in Megève; her mother joining her; liberation; returning to Nice; learning her father had been deported (she never saw him again); emigrating to join her father's relatives in Toronto; returning to Berlin with her mother; and difficulty re-obtaining her German citizenship. Ms. G. discusses her belief that her life would have been different had her father survived; feeling like a foreigner wherever she lives; her paternal family's hostility toward her and her mother; and antisemitism in Germany, even from her friends.
- Author/Creator
- G., Helga, 1929-
- Published
- Potsdam, Germany : Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum für europäisch-jüdische Studien, Universität Potsdam, 1995
- Interview Date
- October 27, 1995.
- Locale
- France
Germany
Berlin (Germany)
Nice (France)
Krosno Odrzańskie (Poland)
Annemasse (France)
Megève (France)
Toronto (Ont.)
- Cite As
- Helga G. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3406). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Bauer, Eva, interviewer.
Leo, Annette, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in German.
