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Karola D. Holocaust testimony (HVT-351) interviewed by Leatrice Rabinsky,

Oral History | Fortunoff Collection ID: HVT-351

Videotape testimony of Karola D., who was born in Łódź in approximately 1920, the tenth of eleven children. She recounts her family's orthodoxy and poverty; her parents' early deaths; the siblings remaining together until they married; attending public school; participating in Agudat Israel; German invasion; some siblings fleeing east; ghettoization; working in a factory; hiding during round-ups; attending a wedding; her sister-in-law giving birth (the child died); the deaths of some siblings; hiding during the ghetto's liquidation; being found; transport with her family to Auschwitz/Birkenau; remaining with her sister and sister-in-law; their transfer to Bergen-Belsen, then Magdeburg; slave labor in a munitions factory; a public hanging; being x-rayed twice, once as her sister (her sister had a spot on her lung), thus saving her from selection; a death march; French POWs giving them food; liberation; returning to Łódź; reunion with a sister who had been in the Soviet Union; leaving Poland with assistance from Beriḥah; marriage in Reichenbach (presently Dzierżoniów, Poland); living in Vienna, then in Salzburg displaced persons camp; moving to Rome; her son's birth; and emigration to the United States in 1951. Ms. D. discusses feelings of utter humiliation in the camps; the importance of faith to her survival (she remains orthodox); the murder of most of her and her husband's families; and continuing nightmares.

Author/Creator
D., Karola, 1920?-
Published
Cleveland, Ohio : National Council of Jewish Women, Holocaust Archive Project, 1984
Interview Date
July 31, 1984.
Locale
Poland
Łódź
Germany
Łódź (Poland)
Dzierżoniów (Poland)
Vienna (Austria)
Rome (Italy)
Language
English
Copies
2 copies: 3/4 in. dub; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
Cite As
Karola D. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-351). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.