Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Esther B. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3186) interviewed by Raymond Kaplan and Evelyn Lowy,

Oral History | Fortunoff Collection ID: HVT-3186

Videotape testimony of Esther B., who was born in Pabianice, Poland in 1927, the youngest of five children. She recounts her family's orthodoxy; experiencing daily discrimination as a Jew; her oldest brother's draft into the Polish military; German invasion; ghettoization; her brother's return, then deportation; knitting gloves to sell for food; her other brother volunteering for a labor camp (she never saw him again); transfer with her parents and sisters to the Łódź ghetto in spring 1942; forced labor in a factory; hiding her parents during a round-up; one sister's deportation; deportation with her parents and sister to Auschwitz in August 1944; separation from her father (she remained with her mother and sister); transfer with her sister to Bergen-Belsen; protecting a fellow prisoner from selection; transfer to Geisenheim; slave labor in a munitions factory; her sister-in-law sharing extra food; a German supervisor leaving her food; transfer to Allach; liberation from an evacuation train by United States troops; living in a nearby villa, then in Flak-Kaserne and Funk Kaserne displaced persons camps; reunion with her brother; living with him, her sister, and sister-in-law in Munich; marrying a survivor from Pabianice in 1947; her siblings' emigration to Australia; and her emigration to the United States in 1949. She notes the recent death of her younger son.

Author/Creator
B., Esther, 1927-
Published
Mahwah, N.J. : Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 1995
Interview Date
November 10, 1995.
Locale
Poland
Pabianice
Łódź
Pabianice (Poland)
Munich (Germany)
Language
English
Copies
4 copies: 3/4 in. dub; Betacam SP restoration master; Betacam SP restoration submaster; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
Cite As
Esther B. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3186). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.