Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Sally R. Holocaust testimony (HVT-475) interviewed by Michael Weiss,

Oral History | Fortunoff Collection ID: HVT-475

Videotape testimony of Sally R., who was born in Będzin, Poland in 1923, one of six sisters. She recounts antisemitic harassment; German invasion in 1939; expropriation of her father's business; his death; one sister's deportation; communications from her from Grünberg; marriage in 1943; ghettoization; living with her husband's family and one sister; forced factory labor; hiding in a bunker during round-ups; deportation of her mother, other sisters, and sister's child (they did not survive); arranging to join her sister in Grünberg; transfer with her husband and sister to the Sosnowiec ghetto, then Grünberg; slave labor in a textile factory; occasionally seeing her husband; hospitalization; her sisters' visits; assistance from the prisoner doctor; her husband's transfer in 1944; a death march in January 1945 to Helmbrechts, Zwodau, then toward the Czech border; briefly escaping with one sister; another escape with her sisters and two friends; hiding with a Czech farmer, then a woman in town for three weeks; liberation by United States troops; Red Cross assistance; hospitalization; traveling with her sisters to Plzeň, Prague, and Ostrava; learning her husband had survived; reunion with him in Będzin; living in Budapest for nine months; joining her sisters in Germany; and emigration to the United States in 1949.

Author/Creator
R., Sally, 1923-
Published
Cleveland, Ohio : National Council of Jewish Women, Holocaust Archive Project, 1984
Interview Date
August 1, 1984.
Locale
Poland
Będzin
Sosnowiec (Województwo Śląskie)
Będzin (Poland)
Plzeň (Czech Republic)
Prague (Czech Republic)
Ostrava (Czech Republic)
Budapest (Hungary)
Germany
Language
English
Copies
2 copies: 3/4 in. dub; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
Cite As
Sally R. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-475). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.