Ruchama P. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4152)

Videotape testimony of Ruchama P., who was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1922, the youngest of three children. She recounts her mother's death when she was two; attending Jewish, then public school; her father's remarriage; a troubled relationship with her stepmother; participating in Hechalutz; attending a boarding school in 1937; visiting her family on holidays; living briefly with her paternal grandparents; German invasion; her brothers' participation in the underground; one wanting to put her in hiding, but refusing to leave her younger half-siblings; deportation to Westerbork; a close relationship with her cousin; forced agricultural labor; caring for a group of children; hospitalization for polio; her grandparents' arrival; her grandfather's death; transfer to Bergen-Belsen with her grandmother, half-sister, aunt, and father; her older brother's arrival; her aunt and grandmother's release for emigration to Palestine; caring for her half-sister when she was ill; liberation by British troops; hospitalization; transfer to Celle; returning to Amsterdam; transfer to a hospital in Eindhoven where her uncle was a physician; learning one of her older brothers and her father had been killed; transfer to the Jewish hospital in Amsterdam, then by the Red Cross to a sanitarium in Davos; remaining for over two years supported by the Joint; her other older brother's emigration to Palestine; meeting her future husband, and emigration to Israel. Ms. P. discusses her firm belief that she would survive in concentration camps, and continuing health problems resulting from her experiences. She shows photographs