- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Genia L., who was born in Szydłowiec, Poland in 1922, the third of four children. She recalls her warm and loving home; her family's orthodoxy; attending a Polish school; German invasion in September 1939; selling their possessions for food; ghettoization; her two older brothers' marriages in 1941; a warning two days prior to a round-up in fall 1942; moving to a work camp with her brother and his wife; slave labor building railroad tracks; escaping with her brother; a Polish acquaintance purchasing train tickets for them; joining their grandmother in the Skarżysko ghetto; learning her parents and younger brother had been deported to Treblinka; hearing from her other brother (he was later deported to Treblinka); round-up to Skarżysko concentration camp; slave labor in a HASAG munitions factory in Werke B; living in a barrack with relatives and a friend; and sewing to earn extra food for her brother, uncle, and friend.
Ms. L. tells of her brother bribing an officer to save their aunt; receiving extra food from a Polish supervisor; separation from her brother when she was transferred to Częstochowa in August 1944; slave labor; transfer to Bergen-Belsen in January on open freight cars; receiving food and clothing from a relative; transfer to Burgau, then Türkheim; a death march to Allach in early spring 1945; liberation; transfer to Feldafing displaced persons camp; reunion with her brother; marriage in February 1946; attempting illegal emigration to Palestine on the ship Exodus in 1947; return to Europe; emigration to Israel in 1948; and the births of two children. Ms. L. discusses the importance of being with her brother to her survival; losing her faith in God; a cold reception by native Israelis; nightmares resulting from her experiences; not sharing her story with her children until they had their own children; and a trip with her daughter, brother, and nephew to Poland in 1988, from which it took her a year to recover.
- Author/Creator
- L., Genia, 1922-
- Published
- Tel Aviv, Israel : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1996
- Interview Date
- August 1 and 8, 1996.
- Locale
- Poland
Szydłowiec (Województwo Mazowieckie)
Skarżysko-Kamienna
Israel
Szydłowiec (Województwo Mazowieckie, Poland)
Palestine
- Cite As
- Genia L. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3839). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in Hebrew.
