Hana V. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4437)

Videotape testimony of Hana V., who was born in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia in 1928, one of three children. She recounts German occupation; her father's escape to Italian-occupied Mostar; eviction from their home by Ustaša; truck transport elsewhere, then return to a prison in Sarajevo; deportation to Djakovo; the Osijeck Jewish community arranging her release to a Jewish family in Podravska Slatina; her father sending her false papers; joining him and her siblings in Mostar; transfer to Rab Island during Italian withdrawal; Italian capitulation; partisans placing them in a village; escaping to another village when Germans approached; imprisonment by Ustaša; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in July 1944; separation with her sister from her father and brother; slave labor moving stones; becoming ill; friends and her sister obtaining medication for her; transfer to Rajsko; a death march and train transport to Ravensbrück; guards leaving during nearby Allied bombardments; escaping with her sister and others; joining Soviet soldiers; being shot during an encounter with Germans; recuperating in Prague; returning to Sarajevo in July; learning her mother was killed in Jasenovac, and her father and brother in Birkenau; marriage; and the birth of four children. Ms. V. discusses a painful visit to Auschwitz in 1970; recreating the close family of her childhood with her husband, children, and six grandchildren; the seige of Sarajevo; losing contact with her children; shooting of her husband in August 1992 in front of their home (he recovered); learning that her daughter and son were both killed in October; the escape of her other two children and her murdered daughter's child; and support from the Jewish community.