- Summary
- Videotape testimony of a non-Jewish woman who was born in 1913 in Belgium. She recounts her happy childhood; marriage in spring 1932; moving shortly thereafter to Latvia, where her husband's family owned fur and textile businesses; living in Limbaži and Rīga; cordial relations with Jews, Germans, Russians, and Latvians; observing overt antisemitism in Germany while traveling to visit her family in Belgium; Latvian nationalism beginning in 1935, which included antisemitism; rabbis advising Jews to emigrate; Soviet occupation; German invasion in June 1941; observing ghettoization, round-ups, and deportations, including their Jewish neighbors, whom they never saw or heard from again; the arrival of Jews from western Europe to the ghetto; her sister-in-law's arrest for attempting to give bread to Jews in the ghetto; her release six weeks later; fleeing Rīga by ship with her husband and son in October 1943; her husband's death en route; arrival in Germany; living with another sister-in-law in Berlin during Allied bombings; traveling with her son to Liège in May; and her father bringing them home from there. The witness notes frequent nightmares due to her experiences.
- Published
- Brussels, Belgium : Fondation Auschwitz, 1998
- Interview Date
- September 17, 1998.
- Locale
- Latvia
Rīga
Belgium
Limbaži (Latvia)
Rīga (Latvia)
Berlin (Germany)
Liège (Belgium)
- Cite As
- Anonymous Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4188). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Thanassekos, Yannis, interviewer.
Rosenfeldt, Michel, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in French.
