Edit K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3907)

Videotape testimony of Edit K., who was born in Ústí nad Labem, Czechoslovakia in 1926, the younger of two sisters in an affluent, assimilated family. She recounts attending a Czech school; cordial relations with non-Jews; visiting grandparents in Teplice; moving to Prague in September 1938; German invasion in March 1939; anti-Jewish restrictions, including expulsion from school; deportation with her family to the Łódź ghetto in fall 1941; working in a carpet factory; public execution of an escapee; receiving letters from her boyfriend who was in Theresienstadt; her father's deportation in September 1942 (she never saw him again); transfer to a shoe factory; non-Jewish friends sending them packages from Prague; deportation with her mother, sister, and best friend to Auschwitz in August 1944; their transfer to Bergen-Belsen in September, then to Salzwedel; privileged work for German soldiers; receiving extra food and clothing from one of them; a severe beating; transfer to a munitions factory; working with French prisoners of war; Allied bombings; Red Cross visits; liberation by United States troops in April 1945; transfer to a German air base to recover; returning to Prague in June; learning she and her mother had no relatives who had survived; marriage; divorce; emigration to Israel; and marriage to a survivor. Ms. K. discusses horrendous conditions in the Łódź ghetto, including lice, corpses in the street, and the pain of hunger; relations among national groups in the camps; the difficulty of conveying her experiences, the pain of which never leaves her; resulting health problems; and deciding not to have children. She dedicates this testimony to her father and other murdered relatives.