Chava K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3789)

Videotape testimony of Chava K., who was born in Komárno, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1931, the older of two children. She recounts visiting relatives in Budapest; her family's conversion in 1942, hoping to save themselves; enjoying church services; her father's illness and death; German invasion in 1944; her mother's deportation; their former maid assisting her and her brother; living with her ballet teacher, then her grandparents; ghettoization; living with her friend's family; deportation to Auschwitz; attaching herself to an older woman; transfer a week later to Płaszów; useless slave labor; observing prisoner executions; and transfer back to Auschwitz. Ms. K. discusses psychologically distancing herself from what was happening in the ghetto and camps, then becoming terrified in Płaszów; living with that fear to the present day; and a recent visit to Komárno. She reads her poetry.