Beatrice S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-72) interviewed by Dori Laub,

Videotape testimony of Beatrice S., who was born in 1933 in a small town near Vilna, Poland (now Lithuania.) She recalls her prewar home life and schooling, and the Russian occupation in 1939. She relates her vivid memories of the German occupation in 1941 and the atrocities which followed, including the murder of her mother and two-year-old brother (which she and her father witnessed from their hiding place); her flight to relatives in another town; her escape with her father into the woods; and the 900 kilometer walk to the Russian front. She describes their journey to Siberia; her separation from her father, whom she never saw again and of whose fate she remains uncertain; her life in a large orphanage, where she suffered with many illnesses; and her postwar return home with a woman from her village. She recounts her reunion with her uncle in Berlin; her stay in a displaced persons camp in Eschwege; her emigration to the United States; and the difficulties she experienced and surmounted in her new home. Mrs. S. also speaks of the deaths of two of her children; the immediacy of her memories and dreams; and her feelings about relating her experiences to family and friends.