Jaffe M. Holocaust testimony (HVT-296) interviewed by Gloria Demby and Gabriele Schiff

Videotape testimony of Jaffe M., who was born in Onod, near Miskolc, Hungary, in 1931. She describes prewar family and community life; Hungarian anti-Jewish legislation; and her family's transfer to Diosgyor, where her father was made head of the ghetto. She relates her parents' futile attempt to secure a hiding place for their children; life in the ghetto; the deportation of her father and brother in May 1944; the liquidation of the ghetto three days later; and transfer to a brick factory in Miskolc. She remembers the journey from Miskolc to Auschwitz; separation from her mother upon arrival; her work as a food carrier in Birkenau; the extermination of the Romanies in Auschwitz; and escaping from a selection by joining her sister, with whom she survived the war. She recounts their transfer after three months to Bergen-Belsen, then to Rochlitz and Grasslitz in Czechoslovakia; the death march from Grasslitz in spring 1945; escaping with her sister and two other girls to a nearby forest; liberation by a Russian Jew in May 1945; and emigration to Palestine in 1946. She also speaks of the importance of becoming a mother and a recent visit to Auschwitz/Birkenau and Schloss Hartheim (a gassing center for Mauthausen and Flossenbürg) where her father perished.