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Oral history interview with Helen Collins

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1999.A.0122.671 | RG Number: RG-50.477.0671

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    Oral history interview with Helen Collins

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    The interview describes Ms. Collins's childhood and young adulthood in Mannheim, Germany, the assimilated nature of life there, the effect of Hitler's rise to power on her family, including her father's loss of his job, and the family's early explorations of immigration to Palestine or the United States. Ms. Collins recalls the events of Kristallnacht in November 1938, her father's imprisonment in Dachau and his later release, and the family's forced move to a ghetto in Stuttgart, Germany. She describes emigrating from Germany in 1939 to England and then the United States, her experiences in New York City, in Berkeley, California, where she moved in to join her brother in December 1941, and where she met her husband and married in 1952.

    Ms. Collins describes learning of the death of parents - her father in a ghetto and her mother in Auschwitz, receiving restitution for family property seized, and being invited to Stuttgart by city officials and the Jewish-Christian Society. She reflects on how the events of the Holocaust changed the course of her life.
    Interviewee
    Helen Collins
    Date
    interview:  1990 October 18
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Jewish Family and Children's Services of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (SVHS) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

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

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    The Bay Area Holocaust Oral History Project conducted the interview with Helen Collins on October 18, 1990. The interview was received by the Archives Branch in July 2003.
    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 08:46:18
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn515121

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