Tzila P. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3884)

Videotape testimony of Tzila P., who was born in Kybartai, Lithuania, one of two sisters. She recounts the family moving to Kaunas; her sister's emigration to Palestine in the early 1930s; marriage in 1938; Soviet occupation; German invasion; a round-up by Lithuanians, including her father and husband; her mother retrieving her father (she never saw her husband again); ghettoization; obtaining work outside the ghetto; smuggling food into the ghetto; hiding her mother during round-ups (her father had been taken); hiding in a bunker, then surrendering; deportation to Stutthof; transfer to Gutowo; assistance from a German soldier; her mother's death; remaining behind, sick with typhus, during the camp's evacuation; liberation by Soviet troops; treatment by physicians; transfer to the Soviet Union; returning to Kaunas; and traveling to Vilna, Berlin, then Munich, wanting to join her sister in Palestine. Ms. P. discusses being warned of round-ups by people she knew in the Judenrat; losing her will to live in the camps; the importance of being with her mother to her survival; and never really having ended her Holocaust experience, despite her present life. The testimony ends abruptly.