Eva W. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2869) interviewed by Lawrence L. Langer,

Videotape testimony of Eva W., who was born in Novaya Myshʹ, Russia in 1913, one of six children. She recounts her father's service in World War I; his imprisonment as a POW in Germany for five years; attending school in Baranavichy, then Catholic nursing school in Warsaw; working in Warsaw after graduation; marriage in 1938; a visit home in 1939 (she never saw her family again); raising her husband's stepson; German invasion; ghettoization; becoming pregnant; her son's premature birth in June 1942; being released from a round-up by an SS man; hiding during round-ups; a former teacher from Myshʹ offering to hide her; her husband making alternate arrangements; leaving the ghetto with a non-Jew in March 1943; traveling with him to Czarny Potok; living as non-Jews; learning of the Warsaw ghetto revolt; treating locals when they learned she was a nurse; her husband sending a nun for the baby (he could be hidden since he was not circumcised); her unwillingness to give him up; communication from her husband and stepson from Germany; refusing to admit she was Jewish when beaten by SS; returning to Warsaw; and using her nursing school diploma to prove she was Catholic (two non-Jewish friends from school confirmed this).

Ms. W. remembers being robbed of her papers; assistance from a friend in the AK; living with his aunt; the same friend obtaining new false papers for her; living with another family; leaving when exposure was threatened; seeking her former teacher in Łuków; alternating between there and Warsaw; a friend bringing her to Baniocha; working in the medical center; stealing medicine for the partisans; dealing with SS to dispel suspicion; a friend watching her son when she worked; liberation by Soviet troops in January 1945; learning her husband and stepson had been killed; moving to Łódź; meeting her future husband; illegally leaving Poland after the Kielce pogrom; living in Obděnice, then Paris; arranging her son's circumcision; marriage; emigration to the United States in 1947; and the births of a daughter and son. Ms. W. discusses continuing contacts with those who saved her; her second son's death in 1983; visits to Poland to see her rescuers, graves, and concentration camps; and trying to locate the mass grave in Myshʹ where her family was killed.