Vladka and Benjamin M. Holocaust testimony (HVT-939) interviewed by Laurel Vlock,

Videotape testimony of Vladka M. and her husband Benjamin M. Mrs. M. tells of her wartime life as an underground courier between the Warsaw ghetto and non-Jewish Warsaw and contrasts ghetto life with life on the Aryan side. Pointing out the incorrect way in which Poles today equate the ghetto uprising with the (non-Jewish) Polish resistance, she describes spiritual resistance in the ghetto, meetings of the ghetto underground, and the Warsaw ghetto revolt from her perspective outside the ghetto. She stresses the importance of documentation and talks about the underground archive of the Warsaw ghetto and the book she wrote two years after the war. Mrs. M. speaks of parental protectiveness characteristic of survivors; her empathy with survivors who were parents during the Holocaust; and the link between technology and the Holocaust.

Mr. M. discusses his family background; helping to build hiding places for Jews on the Aryan side; his own hiding; his involvement with the Jewish underground; and digging people out of bunkers at liberation. He relates meeting his future wife and their marriage seven days after liberation. He tells of a recent fact-finding tour of Warsaw and his disgust at the vandalized conditions of the Warsaw Jewish cemetery. Mr. M. reflects on the limitations of scholarship; the significance of the Warsaw ghetto uprising; and the importance of survivor testimony.