Priska L. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3856)

Videotape testimony of Priska L., who was born in 1916 in Stropkov, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (presently Slovakia), the fourth of five children. She recounts moving to Zlaté Moravce; a wonderful childhood; her family's assimilated lifestyle; training as a teacher; a teaching position in 1936 in Pezinok, then in Čataj in 1938; termination of her position due to anti-Jewish laws; teaching at a private language academy in Bratislava; marriage in 1941; deportation of her parents and one sister in 1942 (they did not survive); her other sister posing as a non-Jew (she survived); arrest by Hlinka guards in September 1944 (she was three months pregnant); deportation with her husband to Sered for three days, then Auschwitz; separation from him (he did not survive); transfer to Freiberg; slave labor in an airplane factory; her supervisor and a Czech physician assisting her; her daughter's birth on April 12, 1945; transfer with the baby seventeen days later to Mauthausen; liberation by United States troops on May 5; an American physician checking her baby; returning to Bratislava on May 14; relatives of her husband's former colleague occupying her apartment; staying with them; teaching English; and returning to university. Ms. L. discusses her conversion to Lutheranism; attributing her survival to God; changing her surname; not remarrying in order to give her daughter her full attention; her daughter's emigration to Israel, then the United States; her grandson's recent marriage; and sharing her story with her daughter and grandson. She shows photographs.