Rachel L. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1304) interviewed by Rachel Wizner and Dana L. Kline

Videotape testimony of Rachel L., who was born in Chełm, Poland in 1924. Mrs. L. recalls family life; her father's respected position; German occupation; establishment of the Judenrat; ghettoization; children becoming "old" people; hunger; a mass killing in December 1939; forced labor; her father's death from hunger; her mother being taken on the first round-up; forming a bond with another girl who had been left alone; and going together to Polish villages. She describes helpful farmers; fear of staying long due to the risk to their helpers; Germans compelling Jews to perform humiliating acts in the Rejowiec ghetto; forced labor with chemicals resulting in burns and gangrene in her fingers; deportation to Majdanek; exchanging names with one of two sisters so they could remain together; transfer to Skarżysko-Kamienna; munitions work; producing more than her quota; receiving extra soup from the overseer which she shared with a friend; transfer a year later to Częstochowa, then Ravensbrück, and to Bergen-Belsen in 1945; extreme conditions; mass burials; liberation by British troops; many deaths after liberation; and contacting her future husband. Mrs. L. vividly details life and conditions in ghettos and concentration camps.