Genia G. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3779)

Videotape testimony of Genia G., who was born in Lakhva, Poland (presently Belarus) in 1926, one of three daughters. She recounts attending Polish school; summer vacations in Pinsk and Luninets; Soviet occupation; attending a Russian school; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; forced labor with her younger sister assigned, by the Judenrat headed by Dov Lopatin; her father and older sister hiding; ghettoization; her father hiding valuables with non-Jews; non-Jews offering to help her family escape (her father refused, knowing others would be killed); separation from her family and being shot during a mass escape from the ghetto (she saw her older sister's corpse when leaving); treatment by a partisan doctor; living in a partisan family camp; joining a fighting unit; performing reconnaissance missions in villages; participation in the liberation of Slutsk; reunion with her younger sister in Lakhva; traveling with her to Łódź, then Föhrenwald displaced persons camp; her sister's legal emigration to Palestine; illegal emigration by ship several months later; interdiction by the British; incarceration in ʻAtlit for one month; marriage; and the births of two daughters. Ms. G. discusses details of partisan life; non-Jews refusing to return family belongings after the war; and guilt for leaving her parents when she escaped from Lakhva.