Ruth J. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1104) interviewed by Joanne Weiner Rudof and Helen Katz,

Videotape testimony of Ruth J., who was born in Frankenberg, Germany, in 1932. Ms. J. recalls a family move to Düsseldorf; Kristallnacht; her parents' decision to flee to Holland; living on the estate of an anti-Nazi baron in Utrecht; being joined by her grandmother; German invasion; imposition of anti-Semitic measures; the disappearances of school classmates; deportation of her grandmother to Terezín; and in 1942 being hidden by a non-Jewish friend who told others the family had committed suicide. She describes being helped by the Dutch resistance; separation from her parents; placement with several families (sometimes in the guise of a "long lost cousin"); her "child-like" awareness of the reasons for hiding; reunion with her parents in hiding; Allied liberation in 1944; postwar confusion about her religious identity; her mother's emotional breakdown and suicide; her father's remarriage and suicide; emigration to America in 1953; and becoming the first woman in the film projectionists' union. Ms. J. illustrates her account with collages she created from family photographs and documents.