Libiena E. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3745)

Videotape testimony of Libiena E., who was born in Nová Paka, Czechoslovakia (presently Czech Republic) in 1923, the youngest of five children. She recounts her family moving to Pardubice; attending school; their move to Prague in 1935; German occupation in 1939; surprise when her parents informed them they were Jewish; an uncle's arrest by the Gestapo (they never saw him again); anti-Jewish restrictions; expulsion from school; a non-Jewish teacher's offer to remain; choosing to work; removing her star to attend movies and swim; deportation with her parents to the Łódź ghetto; working in agriculture; the deaths of her parents from hunger; hospitalization for typhus; a job repairing telephones; her unsuccessful suicide attempt; marriage to a Polish Jew for companionship and safety; working in a textile factory; deportation with her husband's sisters to Ravensbrück in fall 1944; transfer to Wittenberg; slave labor in Arado Flugzeugwerke; always remaining with one sister-in-law and keeping her alive; frequent Allied bombings; abandonment by the Germans; liberation by Soviet troops; returning home; learning one brother had survived; joining her husband in Poland; and emigration to Israel in 1950. Ms. E. discusses details of ghetto and camp life, particularly starvation; her brother's execution following the Slánský trials; and writing a book about her experiences.