Rachel K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3372)

Videotape testimony of Rachel K., who was born in Sokoły, Poland in approximately 1921, one of two children. She recounts attending a Polish public school; antisemitic harassment; attending a Jewish gymnasium in Białystok; German invasion; Soviet occupation a week later; moving to Białystok; her father and brother fleeing to Vilna; she and her mother joining them; her father living in another town due to his immigrant status (she never saw him again); German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; forced labor cleaning German soldiers' quarters; ghettoization; hiding during round-ups; her mother arranging for them to be smuggled to the Białystok ghetto; the Judenrat finding them a room and work; attending a meeting led by the Judenrat head, Ephraim Barash; escaping from a work group in Łapy; hiding with a Polish friend; warning her uncle in Sokoły to hide; escaping a round-up; hiding with a Polish family who gave her their daughter's papers; sneaking back to the Białystok ghetto; leaving again to arrange her family's escape; a round-up in August 1943; hiding in a bunker with her mother, brother, and others for two weeks; capture; escaping with her mother and brother; hiding in an attic; Poles helping them leave the ghetto; help from other Poles in nearby villages; building a bunker in the forest for the winter; moving in the spring; her brother's capture and murder; liberation by Soviet troops; returning to Białystok; encountering Polish antisemitism; working in a school for Jewish orphans; moving to Sokoły; reporting her brother's killers and testifying against them for revenge; their kibbutz moving to Walbrzych, Legnica, then Ulm displaced persons camp; attending a Dror seminar in Indersdorf; and emigration with her mother to Israel in 1948. Ms. K. sings a Yiddish song from the ghetto.