Chava L. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3803)

Videotape testimony of Chava L., who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1926, the older of two sisters. She recounts her family's relative affluence; attending a German, then a Slovak school, until the expulsion of Jews; her father's dismissal from his bank job; participating in a Zionist youth group beginning in 1938, despite her parents' disapproval; her mother's brothers converting to Christianity in 1939; her refusal to do so; living on a Zionist training farm; being sent home because she was under sixteen; helping produce false papers and ration coupons with her youth group; help from non-Jewish friends; Gordonyah members staying at their house; the 1944 Slovak uprising; a former cook hiding her family; deportation with her family to Auschwitz; separation from her parents (she never saw them again); remaining with her sister; their transfer to Freiberg; slave labor in an airplane factory; a fellow prisoner giving birth; observing the bombing of Dresden; train transfer to Mauthausen; Czechs bringing them food en route; liberation by United States troops; she and her sister returning home via Vienna; reunion with an aunt, uncle, and friend; attending a Zionist conference in Budapest; organizing a Jewish orphanage in Bratislava; assistance from the Joint; meeting her future husband in 1946; and emigration to Israel in 1949. Ms. L. discusses maintaining hope and helping each other, to which she attributes her survival; continuing strong bonds with fellow survivors; Israelis lack of interest in survivor experiences; pervasive painful memories and nightmares; sharing her experiences with her daughters; and visiting Bratislava with them in 1984, and several times afterward.