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Sally P. Holocaust testimony (HVT-334) interviewed by Sidney Elsner,

Oral History | Fortunoff Collection ID: HVT-334

Videotape testimony of Sally P., who was born in approximately 1920 and raised in Płońsk, Poland. She recalls her large, extended family; antisemitic harassment; German invasion; her parents fleeing to Warsaw; selling their goods to support her brothers; her mother's return; ghettoization; public hangings; emotional devastation from observing her family's suffering, particularly hunger; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation from her family (she never saw them again); transfer to Budy, then back to Auschwitz/Birkenau; finding her friends; slave labor clearing bombing rubble and in a munitions factory; mud and rats leading to diseases; assignment to the hospital; observing Josef Mengele conducting "medical experiments"; sorting clothing of murdered Jews; the Sonderkommando uprising; a death march and train transport to Ravensbrück in January 1945; transfer to Malchow, then Torgau; liberation from a death march by United States troops in Grimma; hospitalization; finding two friends; transfer to Bayreuth displaced persons camp; thinking of suicide, upon realizing her entire family was killed; emigration to the United States; and a nervous breakdown due to her experiences. Ms. P. discusses her conviction that she would not survive the camps; wonder that she did; and pervasive, painful memories.

Author/Creator
P., Sally, 1920?-
Published
Cleveland, Ohio : National Council of Jewish Women, Holocaust Archive Project, 1984
Interview Date
August 8, 1984.
Locale
Poland
Płońsk
Płońsk (Poland)
Grimma (Germany)
Language
English
Copies
2 copies: 3/4 in. dub; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
Cite As
Sally P. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-334). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.