Miriam E. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3848)

Videotape testimony of Miriam E., who was born in Bełżyce, Poland in 1929, the youngest of three children. She recounts her family's poverty; their move to Lublin; attending three years of public school; visiting her aunt in Bełżyce; German invasion; observing Germans killing family friends; returning home four months later; her family escaping in Piaski during their forced relocation; living with a family friend; returning to Lublin days later; her parents returning her to her aunt in Bełżyce, thinking it safer (she never saw them again); in 1942, her uncle sending her and two cousins to another uncle in Lublin, who had a workshop vital to the Germans in Lublin; living with him in the Majdan Tartarski ghetto; hiding during round-ups; returning to Bełżyce, which had been ghettoized; hiding during round-ups; a woman living with them giving birth; hiding with non-Jews in 1942; denouncement; the woman who hid them bribing the Polish police to release them; deportation to Budzyn; a kapo allowing her younger male cousin to stay with them in the female barrack; slave labor in the kitchen providing access to extra food; sharing it with her family; and observing Kommandant Reinhold Feiks execute one of her cousins.

Ms. E. recalls deportation with her aunt and cousins to Majdanek; working in the laundry; hospitalization; a death march (she walked with her family) and train transfer to Auschwitz/Birkenau; observing the fires and smelling the odors of the crematoria; being selected for death; escaping to a children's barrack to join her youngest cousin; a death march with her to Ravensbrück; transfer to Malchow; receiving Red Cross packages; another march; abandonment by the guards; liberation by Soviet troops; living in Neubrandenburg; traveling to Łódź, then Lublin; living in an orphanage; reunion with her aunt and cousins; living in Pieszyce; attending school; participation in Zionist youth groups; moving to Lampertheim and Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp; emigration to Israel via Italy; and the births of two children. Ms. E. discusses physical and mental health issues resulting from her experiences; continuing hope her immediate family survived; not sharing her experiences with her children, fearing a negative influence; Israelis' lack of interest in survivors; and a year of emotional struggle when she wrote her story which she shared with her children.