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Oral history interview with Rachel Bielicka Gurdus

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1999.A.0182 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0400

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    Oral history interview with Rachel Bielicka Gurdus

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Rachel Bielicka Gurdus, born in December 1922 in Vilnius, Lithuania, describes her family and their traditional religious practices; her father’s business running a mill; the pressures of antisemitism in Poland; her family considering themselves Jewish and not Polish; learning Russian after the Soviet Union invaded Poland in 1939; accepting refugees into her home after the war started; the Russians taking away land and sending some Jews to Siberia; moving into the Vilnius ghetto and working for the Judenrat; the transfer of her father and brother-in-law to a work camp; organizing groups to garden and procure food in the ghetto; making connections with friends who had jobs in the ghetto; fighting the Nazi and Lithuanian guards through a ghetto resistance organization; the ghetto’s liquidation and her attempts to hide in and escape from the ghetto; partisan activities in the forests; her transfer to a camp outside of Riga; working in a linen factory and having to sing for the soldiers at her camp; her transfer to Strassenhof and then Stutthof; keeping herself clean and finding food in the camps; the evacuation of Stutthof through the forests; the arrival of Allied tanks, who liberated, fed, and housed her and the other inmates; the difficulties of traveling after the war because she did not have any documents; receiving medical treatment and reuniting with her family; and her immigration to the United States in 1976.
    Interviewee
    Rachel B. Gurdus
    Interviewer
    Katie Davis
    Date
    interview:  1999 August 16

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Genre/Form
    Oral histories.
    Extent
    5 videocasettes (Betacam SP) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    Katie Davis, on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Branch, conducted the oral history interview with Rachel Bielicka Gurdus on August 17, 1999.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:02:37
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn507289

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