Sara G. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3795)

Videotape testimony of Sara G., who was born in 1929 in Biała Podlaska, Poland, one of four children. She recounts her family's orthodoxy; attending public school; her sister's marriage and move to Vilnius; antisemitic harassment; brief Soviet occupation; one brother fleeing east; German occupation; ghettoization; clandestinely trading merchandise from the family store; her father's deportation (she never saw him again); hiding during a three-day round-up, in which her grandfather was shot; transfer to the Międzyrzecz ghetto; staying with an aunt who already lived there; her mother's death from illness; separation from her brother when she was deported to Majdanek (he did not survive); giving her age as sixteen per her mother's advice (she was fourteen); public hanging of an escapee; her sense of isolation and losing her will to live; transfer to Skarżysko-Kamienna; slave labor in a munitions factory (Werke A), then a HASAG factory outside the camp; a Polish civilian worker (her parents' former customer) giving her extra food; sharing it with friends; transfer to a HASAG factory in Częstochowa eighteen months later; abandonment by the German guards; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to Łuków; returning home; living with relatives; correspondence from her brother (he was in Palestine); reunion with her sister; traveling to Szczecin, then Hamburg; living in Bad Reichenhall displaced persons camp; assistance from UNRRA; illegal emigration to Palestine; incarceration on Cyprus; arrival in Israel in 1948; marriage to a survivor in 1950; and the births of two children. Ms. G. notes sharing her experiences with her children and grandchildren.