Tatyana G. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3594) interviewed by Arkadiĭ Shulʹman and Vitali Zaika

Videotape testimony of Tatyana G., who was born in Minsk, Belarus in 1918, the fourth of five children. She describes her family's orthodoxy; cordial relations with non-Jews; attending a polytechnic institute; working as a chemist; participating in Komsomol; German invasion in June 1941; briefly fleeing; ghettoization; a mass killing including some relatives; warning of an impending mass killing; escaping at her mother's insistence; a former non-Jewish neighbor reluctantly keeping her overnight; hearing machine guns and thinking they were killing her mother, sisters, and other relatives; contemplating suicide; her uncle's German acquaintance bringing her to him in the ghetto; working as a courier for the resistance under Michael Gebelev; hiding during round-ups; Soviet POWs killing their German guards and escaping in April 1943; her uncle and family being killed; working in a factory until June 30, 1944 (the ghetto had been liquidated); transfer to a camp in Poland; group prayers on Yom Kippur; evacuation to Bergen-Belsen; severe beatings; liberation by British troops; hospitalization; repatriation; living with a non-Jewish neighbor; hospitalization until 1951; and official antisemitism under Stalin. Ms. G. discusses nightmares, loneliness, and poor health resulting from her experiences.