Helen S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4136) interviewed by Raymond Kaplan,
Videotape testimony of Helen S., who was born in Vilna, Russia (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1917, one of three children. She recounts a happy childhood; attending public school; marriage in 1939; her husband's draft into the Polish military; his return in 1940; her son's birth in 1941; German invasion; ghettoization; hiding with her son, husband, and aunt in a bunker with a hundred others; their discovery; the Germans taking her son (she never saw him again); her aunt committing suicide; deportation to Stutthof; separation from her husband; beatings from guards from which she still bears scars; slave labor digging anti-tank ditches; a death march; liberation by Soviet troops; hiding in a house in Szczecin; Soviet soldiers raping survivors; assistance from two of her father's friends; traveling with a friend to Łódź, then Feldafing displaced persons camp; learning her husband had died shortly after liberation; working for UNRRA: remarriage to a survivor whose wife and child had been killed; emigration to the United States, with assistance from HIAS; the births of two daughters; and her second husband's death in 1997. Ms. S. notes not knowing the fate of her parents. She shows photographs.
- Published
- Mahwah, N.J. : Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 1999
- Interview Date
- October 8, 1999.
- Locale
- Lithuania
Vilnius
Russia
Vilnius (Lithuania)
Szczecin (Poland)
Łódź (Poland) - Language
-
English
- Copies
- 2 copies: Betacam SP dub; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
- Cite As
- Helen S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4136). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
-
View in Yale University Library Catalog: http://hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/4847612
Record last modified: 2018-06-04 13:26:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/hvt4847612