Sylvia M. Holocaust testimony (HVT-526) interviewed by Sidney Elsner

Videotape testimony of Sylvia M., who was born in Vilna, Poland (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in approximately 1926, one of three sisters. She recounts attending a Jewish school; increasing antisemitism in the late 1930s; Soviet occupation in 1939; attending free public high school; brief Lithuanian independence; an antisemitic riot; Soviet reoccupation in 1940; German invasion in 1941; her father's forced labor; learning her uncle had been killed with many others; ghettoization in September 1941; her older sister smuggling food; transfer to Keilis due to her older sister's privileged position a furrier; her younger sister's selection (she never saw her again); deportation with her parents and older sister to Rīga, then Stutthof; separation from her father (she never saw him again); her sister risking her life to obtain extra food for their mother; transfer to Mühldorf; Hungarian prisoners sharing food; slave labor washing clothes; liberation by United States troops; living in Feldafing displaced persons camp; learning her parents and older sister had not survived; attending an ORT school; marriage to a survivor in 1946; her daughter's birth in 1948; and emigration to the United States in 1949. Ms. M. discusses nightmares resulting from her experiences, and not sharing her experiences with anyone, including her children, until they were older.