Matilda H. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3660) interviewed by Martin Bútora and Zora Bútorová

Videotape testimony of Matilda H., who was born in Prešov, Czechoslovakia in 1924, one of eight children. She recalls participating in Hashomer Hatzair and a communist youth group; deportation in March 1942 to Poprad, then Auschwitz; slave labor; transfer to Birkenau; various assignments, including the Canada Kommando; joining a resistance group; contracting typhus; organized distribution of "stolen" food and medicine by the resistance; her eldest sister's arrival, then selection for gassing; the death march to Ravensbrück; assisting her friend; posing as non-Jewish political prisoners; evacuation from Ravensbrück; assistance from POWs; liberation by Soviet troops in May 1945; Soviets raping her friend; returning to Prešov via Neubrandenburg and Prague; reunion with a sister and brother, her only surviving relatives; difficult relations with her sister and others who were not in camps; marriage; persecution due to her brother's arrest in 1951; the births of her daughters; and her brother's release in 1954. Mrs. H. discusses the importance of the resistance organization and friends to her survival; intergroup relations in the camps; raising their morale by singing; and rejecting Judaism because she thinks of her Jewish identity as an externally defined stigma. She shows photographs.