Ilsa C. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2619) interviewed by Rex Rains and Maureen Wilt,

Videotape testimony of Ilsa C., who was born in Hamm, Germany in 1916 and raised in Geilenkirchen. She recounts a large, extended family, their strong German identity; cordial relations with non-Jews until Hitler came to power; attending Catholic school; studying in Aachen and Berlin; official hiding of overt antisemitism during the 1936 Olympics; meeting her future husband in Cologne; obtaining papers to emigrate to the United States; returning home for a few months; going to the railroad station with her family during Kristallnacht; traveling to Cologne; visiting her parents in Aachen (the last time she saw them); emigrating with her brother to the United States via England (her future husband had already arrived); continuing to hear from her parents for a while; and her sister's emigration to England. Ms. C. discusses her father's reluctance to leave Germany, not wanting to leave his parents and never having been out of Germany; the deaths of most of her relatives due to that reluctance; and her difficulty conveying the fear they lived with every day.