Edyta S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2136) interviewed by Alberta Strage and David Herman

Videotape testimony of Edyta S., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1929 to an affluent, assimilated family. She recounts her parents' divorce; living with her maternal grandparents and uncle; their Polish patriotism; her mother's remarriage; her grandmother's death in 1937; German invasion; briefly fleeing east; her grandfather's death in 1940 from abusive Germans; ghettoization; attending privately organized classes; stepping over the dead in the street becoming "normal"; lice infestation despite their cleanliness; Jewish police saving her from round-ups; her uncle's deportation; her parents' privileged factory jobs; hiding under her mother's work table; hiding in the attic when all the hidden children were collected; involvement with the ghetto resistance; assistance from the Polish underground to escape with her mother; obtaining false papers; moving frequently; wearing a cross and attending church; paying blackmailers; hearing antisemitic remarks when the ghetto was destroyed; working for the Polish underground; the Warsaw uprising; evacuation to Pruszków; assistance from a former Polish neighbor (her mother testified for her after the war); moving to Nadarzyn; liberation by Soviet troops in January 1945; returning to Warsaw; illegally traveling to Prague, then Germany, realizing her uncle and step-father had perished; living in Landsberg displaced persons camp, then Munich; marriage; emigration alone to the United States; her husband and mother joining her; her child's birth; her husband's death; and marriage five years later. Ms. S. details prewar and ghetto life, many close calls in hiding, and Jewish and non-Jewish people helping them survive.