- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Selma E., who was born in Groningen, Holland, in 1922 and grew up in Zuidwolde, Holland, where her family operated a kosher hotel. She recounts her prewar family life; the influx of German Jews in 1938; anti-Jewish legislation following the German occupation of Holland; going into hiding; her capture and internment in the Dutch camps of Vught and Westerbork; and her deportation to Sobibór. She describes her arrival at Sobibór; her gradual realization that she was in an extermination camp; her work sorting the clothing of the victims of gassing; and the circumstances under which she met her husband-to-be, Chaim, who was active in the camp underground. She vividly recalls the brutality and dehumanization that characterized daily life in Sobibór; her sustaining relationship with Chaim; and the uprising and her escape, with Chaim, from the camp. She tells of their hiding in the Polish countryside; spending nine months in the hayloft of a Polish farmer, during which time she became pregnant; and liberation by the Russians in July 1944. Postwar recollections include her difficulties adjusting to her life in Poland; the birth of her child, who did not survive; postwar antisemitism in Poland; and her attempt to emigrate to Holland with her husband and child.
- Author/Creator
- E., Selma, 1922-2018
- Published
- New Haven, Conn. : Holocaust Survivors Film Project, 1980
- Interview Date
- March 1, 1980.
- Locale
- Netherlands
Groningen (Netherlands)
Zuidwolde (Netherlands)
- Cite As
- Selma E. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-42). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Vlock, Laurel, interviewer.
Auerhahn, Nanette, interviewer.
- Notes
-
Unpublished finding aid available in repository; 1/2 in. VHS is linked to finding aid by time coding.
Related publication: The Black book : the ruthless murder of Jews by German-Fascist invaders throughout the temporarily-occupied regions of the Soviet Union and in the death camps of Poland during the war of 1941-1945 / prepared under the editorship of Ilya Ehrenburg & Vasily Grossman ; translated from the Russian by John Glad and James S. Levine. -- New York : Holocaust Publications : Distribued by Schocken Books c1981.
Additional written material is available in the repository.
Associated material: Chaim E. Holocaust testimony [husband] (HVT-756), Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
