- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Helene J., who was born in Poland in 1918, one of six children. She recounts being orphaned (she does not remember her parents); her grandmother from Paris retrieving them; childhood poverty; marriage at eighteen; her daughter's birth in 1937; briefly evacuating when invasion seemed imminent; staying with a friend outside of Paris; German invasion; her husband bringing them back to Paris; evacuating to Saint-Laurent-de-Neste; locals welcoming them and providing food and other support; her son's birth; registering as a Jew with the mayor and later regretting it; her husband's involvement with the underground; giving her children to the Red Cross to hide; finding them emaciated when she visited; taking them with her; a gendarme's wife warning them of a round-up; hiding with neighbors; another warning; her husband's escape to Spain; learning her sister, her husband, and child had been caught attempting to flee to Spain (her brother-in-law was shot, her sister and child deported and did not survive); walking from village to village in the Pyrenees with her two children; and friends from Saint-Laurent-de-Neste finding them and bringing them back at liberation.
- Author/Creator
- J., Helene, 1918-
- Published
- Peabody, Mass. : Holocaust Center of the Jewish Federation of the North Shore, 1994
- Interview Date
- June 28, 1994.
- Locale
- France
Poland
Paris (France)
Saint-Laurent-de-Neste (France)
- Cite As
- Helene J. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2800). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Walker, Ann Solov, interviewer.
