Helen H. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1182) interviewed by Daniel Gover and Jodie Frank,

Videotape testimony of Helen H., who was born in Polina, Czechoslovakia in 1924, the second of four children. She recalls cordial relations with non-Jews; Hungarian occupation; increasingly restrictive anti-Jewish regulations; ghettoization in another town in 1944; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her mother, father, and brother (she never saw her parents again); slave labor moving rocks; learning of the mass killing and crematoria; wanting to die; a friend encouraging her to care for her younger sisters; assignment to the Canada Kommando; smuggling clothing to the barracks; punishment for efforts to observe Yom Kippur; separation from her sisters; transport to Weisswasser; French civilian workers passing them notes; sabotaging the work; threats that every tenth prisoner would be killed if sabotage continued; desertion by the guards; Czech civilians sheltering them; traveling home; reunion with her sisters en route, then with their brother; living in Budapest; her younger sister's emigration to the United States in 1947, then her own, with her sister and brother, in 1949; and marriage to a survivor she knew in Europe. Ms. H. discusses adapting to dehumanization, but not fear; remaining with friends; and pervasive memories of screams and burning human flesh.