Catharina K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4316) interviewed by Rik Hemmerijckx,
Videotape testimony of Catharina K., who was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1929. She recounts that her father was a widower with two children when he married her mother; their diamond business; being spoiled until the war; their assimilated lifestyle and large extended family; attending a French public school; German invasion; fleeing to Ostend, Paris, Roaillan, then Lisbon; their emigration to Jakarta a few months later to join her half-brother; living in Bandung; her father and brother starting a diamond business; attending a Christian school; Japanese invasion; confiscation of their possessions, then imprisonment in a camp; forced labor; a Japanese beating a friend to death when she did not bow properly; creating sixty-seven small books of sketches; transfer with her mother to another camp near Jakarta; her father's transfer elsewhere; women lighting candles on Sabbath; assistance from her mother's friend who was a nurse; Japanese torturing women who smuggled goods over the fence; many people dying from disease; her mother's illness; liberation in 1945; assistance from British troops; reunion with her father in Bandung; living in Salvation Army quarters; repatriation by the Red Cross via Singapore to Amsterdam; learning almost their entire extended families were killed, including her half-sister; her father's mental illness resulting from the war; his death in 1950; marriage; emigration to the United States with her mother; and their return to Antwerp. Ms. K. discusses the Iraqi Jewish women having the lowest status in the camps; nightmares and physical illnesses resulting from her experiences; sharing her story with her children; identifying herself as a humanist religiously, but ethnically as a Jew; and her artwork, which reflects her war experiences. She shows some of the books she made in the concentration camps.
- Published
- Wilrijk, Belgium : Fondation Auschwitz, 2003
- Interview Date
- March 19, 2003.
- Locale
- Belgium
Antwerp (Belgium)
Ostend (Belgium)
Paris (France)
Roaillan (France)
Lisbon (Portugal)
Jakarta (Indonesia)
Bandung (Indonesia)
Indonesia
Amsterdam (Netherlands) - Language
-
Dutch
- Copies
- 2 copies: Betacam SP dub; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
- Cite As
- Catharina K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4316). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
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View in Yale University Library Catalog: http://hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/6709507
Record last modified: 2018-06-04 13:28:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/hvt6709507