Klara M. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3665) interviewed by Eva Salnerová and Viera Durisova

Videotape testimony of Klara M., who was born in Dolné Saliby, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1925, the oldest of three children. She recalls her family's orthodoxy; cordial relations with non-Jews; attending a local Catholic school, then high school in Bratislava; Hungarian occupation in 1938; expulsion from school; forced relocation in 1944 to the Galanta, then the Nové Zámky ghetto; deportation to Auschwitz in June; separation from her parents and siblings (she never saw them again); transfer to Allendorf; slave labor in a munitions factory; exposure to chemicals that turned their hair orange (picric acid); Dutch and Yugoslav POWs receiving Red Cross packages; a death march in March 1945; abandonment by the guards; liberation by United States troops; transfer to Kassel, then Plzeň; returning home via Bratislava and Nové Zámky; finding an uncle; non-Jewish neighbors returning her family's belongings; marriage to a survivor in October 1945; moving to Bratislava; and the births of three children. Ms. M. discusses the importance of her group helping each other in camp to their survival; pervasive painful memories of separation from her family; reluctance to share her experiences with her children; and villagers in Dolné Saliby inscribing the names of local Jews murdered in the Holocaust on their church monuments.