Vera S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3617) interviewed by Arkadiĭ Shulʹman

Videotape testimony of Vera S., who was born in Minsk, Belarus in 1928. She recounts attending Russian school; German invasion; no prior knowledge of atrocities elsewhere; ghettoization; mass killings; smuggling herself out to trade possessions for food (she did not "look Jewish"); assistance from non-Jewish friends; being caught outside the ghetto during a round-up; finding her mother and brother had survived by hiding in a shed, but her other relatives were gone; arrival of Jews from Germany; escaping with her mother and brother in 1943; joining the partisans; her mother and brother staying in a village; being arrested while scouting; imprisonment and torture in Minsk as a non-Jew (she still retains her false name); deportation to Auschwitz two months later; hospitalization; being saved by a doctor who hid her from the Germans; the death march in January; arrival at Ravensbrück; transfer to Neustadt-Glewe after ten weeks; and liberation on May 2. Ms. S. discusses conditions in the ghetto and the loss of her childhood.