- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Charlotte R., who was born near Košice, Czechoslovakia in 1926. She recalls her father's emigration to the United States; moving to Košice with her mother; annexation by Hungary in 1938, which resulted in a language change at school; hearing about atrocities towards Jews elsewhere and her inability to believe them; the German invasion in 1943; and anti-Jewish legislation, including wearing the yellow star and confiscation of Jewish property. She describes food shortages; the forced round-up of Jews in a brick factory; transport and horrendous conditions in the cattle cars; arrival at Auschwitz; separation from her mother whom she never saw again; transport four weeks later to Hundsfeld; working as a slave laborer for eight months; a death march in January 1945 to Gross Rosen, then Buchenwald; transfer in cattle cars to Mauthausen; becoming very ill and being hidden by her friends; and transfer to Bergen-Belsen where conditions were worse than any she had experienced. She relates liberation by British troops; prisoner deaths from overeating; her partial recovery from tuberculosis and typhus; a feeling of apathy regarding her own fate; transfer to Sweden for treatment; friendship with a nurse whose family brought her home and offered to adopt her; efforts to locate her father in the United States; emigration to join him; and adjustment difficulties. Mrs. R. discusses her continuing friendships, the scars she thinks all survivors bear, and reads one of her poems about survival.
- Author/Creator
- R., Charlotte, 1926-
- Published
- New York, N.Y. : Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, 1985
- Interview Date
- April 27, 1985.
- Locale
- Czechoslovakia
Košice (Slovakia)
Hundsfeld (Germany)
Sweden
- Cite As
- Charlotte R. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-567). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Schiff, Gabriele, interviewer.
Dwork, Bonnie, interviewer.
