- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Hila B., who was born in Jędrzejów, Poland in 1919, the seventh of eight children. She recounts her family's move to Łódź when she was six months old; their orthodoxy and relative affluence; participating in Gordonyah and Maccabi; her father's death in 1936; working to help support the family; marriage in March 1939; her brothers' and husband's military draft; German invasion; return of three brothers and her husband; visiting her injured brother in Skierniewice; his return; several of her siblings moving to Warsaw and her mother to Piotrków Trybunalski; joining her; a sister and niece arriving; round-up of her husband in 1942; working in a factory; hiding in a bunker during round-ups; being assigned to gather belongings from homes of deported Jews; her mother's deportation; forced labor in a textile factory; transfer to a work camp with her sister, her sister's husband, and their child; and one brother's death.
Ms. B. recalls train transfer in November 1944 to Ravensbrück with her sister and nephew, who passed as a girl; brief hospitalization; posing as a non-Jew; slave labor in a uniform factory; the births of three babies, who were immediately killed; public hangings; transfer with her sister and nephew to Bergen-Belsen in March 1945; a woman giving birth; liberation by British troops; finding her sister's husband; living in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp; learning her husband had survived; their reunion; her brother's arrival; her siblings and their families emigrating to Palestine; her daughter's birth in 1947; moving her daughter to Davos in 1950 to recuperate from an illness; visiting Israel with her husband; living in Jever; testifying at a war crime trial in Hamburg; emigration to Israel in 1952; a difficult adjustment; and testifying at the Eichmann trial. Ms. B. discusses singing in the camps; continuing physical ailments due to her experiences; persistent painful memories; negative Israeli attitudes toward survivors; and visiting Bergen-Belsen with her daughter.
- Author/Creator
- B., Hila, 1919-
- Published
- Tel Aviv, Israel : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1991
- Interview Date
- May 4, 1991 and other dates.
- Locale
- Poland
Piotrków Trybunalski
Germany
Israel
Jędrzejów (Województwo Świętokrzyskie, Poland)
Łódź (Poland)
Skierniewice (Poland)
Piotrków Trybunalski (Poland)
Davos (Switzerland)
Jever (Germany)
Hamburg (Germany)
- Cite As
- Hila B. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3330). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Beyrak, Nathan, interviewer.
Tarsi, Anita, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in Hebrew.
