Rosa K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-581) interviewed by Phyllis O. Ziman Tobin and Susanna Neuman

Videotape testimony of Rosa K., who was born in Oświęcim, Poland in 1921. She describes prewar life; German bombardment in 1939; fleeing east with her family; returning home three months later; anti-Jewish laws; Himmler's visit to Oświęcim; construction of Auschwitz concentration camp at a Polish army garrison; the Judenrat supplying Jews for forced labor; learning of extermination of prisoners in Auschwitz; and the 1940 transfer of all Jews not in the concentration camp, including her family, to Sosnowiec. Mrs. K. recalls telling others of the exterminations in Auschwitz and their refusal to believe her; separation from her family and transfer to a flax factory in Czechoslovakia, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen; learning her parents had been killed in Auschwitz; support given and received from a friend (they are still close); liberation by partisans in May 1945; returning to Auschwitz; traveling to Feldafing displaced persons camp; the heartbreak of searching for surviving relatives; and reunion with her brother. She tells of meeting her husband; marriage; birth of a daughter; emigration to the United States; difficulties of adjusting and raising children; and her inability to talk about her experiences with her children.