Claire S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3807)

Videotape testimony of Claire S., who was born in Germany, the oldest of four children of Polish émigrés. She recounts her family's move to Brussels; attending school; working at fourteen to help support her family; joining the Bund; her father's arrest for debt resulting in his deportation to Germany; obtaining money to secure his return; German invasion; one brother hiding in a monastery; anti-Jewish restrictions; marriage in 1942; obtaining false papers; her sister's deportation; bribing officials to free an underground member from the Gestapo; her father's round-up and deportation; arrest and deportation to Malines with her husband; reunion with her father; the camp underground preparing escapes from deportation trains; deportation with her father and husband; jumping from the train with her husband (her father was too ill to jump); assistance from a priest; traveling to Liège; returning to Brussels with assistance from the underground; joining her mother and brother in hiding; aborting a pregnancy; one brother's flight to Switzerland; moving to Charleroi with her husband and mother; working for an underground newspaper; visiting her brother in the monastery; liberation; returning to Brussels; the birth and premature death of her child; her brother's return; emigrating to Uruguay, then Brazil; participating in Wizo; emigration to Israel, and the births of two daughters. Ms. S. discusses relief upon learning from a chance meeting with a woman who had been on their deportation train that her father had died on the train; testifying at a war crimes trial in Germany; and writing a book.