Overview
- Interview Summary
- Esther Grun discusses being raised in Hungary; her early schooling; wearing the gold star once the Germans took over; her parents and the philosophies that they taught her; being sent to Auschwitz; being sent to Ravensbrück; how she lost her whole family to the gas chambers at Auschwitz; the conditions in the camps; the different types of forced labor that she did; the way the prisoners were treated by the guards; the children at Ravensbrück; being chosen for a work detail in a munitions factory near Leipzig, Germany; the bombing of the munitions factory; being sent on a death march; how she escaped by hiding in a barn and being taken in by a woman on a nearby farm; being taken to the town square and having it announced that she and the other two girls with her were available for work; working on a nearby farm; hearing that Hitler was dead and that they were free; leaving the farm to walk home and being picked up by a Red Cross truck; being in a hospital then being sent to a sanatorium in Czechoslovakia after the war because she had TB; making it home and finding only her aunt had survived; the reasons she tells her story; her Jewish faith and praying in the camps; and her thoughts on the emergence of the Nazi movement and human cruelty.
- Date
-
interview:
2009
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Dorothee von Huene-Greenberg
Physical Details
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- Restrictions on use. Use of material may be subject to copyright.
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Death marches--Europe. Faith (Judaism) Forced labor. Gas chambers. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Hungary--Personal narratives. Holocaust survivors--United States. Jewish children in the Holocaust--Hungary. Jews--Hungary. Star of David badges. Tuberculosis. Women--Personal narratives.
- Personal Name
- Grun, Esther Weisz.
- Corporate Name
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp) Ravensbrück (Concentration camp)
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- Dorothee von Huene-Greenberg donated a copy of the oral testimony of Esther Weisz Grun to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum December 21, 2012. The testimony was originally recorded during a class presentation at Pace University in Pleasantville, NY ca. 2009.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2023-11-16 09:29:49
- This page:
- http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn74560
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Also in Esther Weisz Grun oral history collection
Includes a CD-ROM of audio interviews with Esther Weisz Grun conducted from December 15, 2005 until May 8, 2006 and a DVD of a video testimony recorded at Pace University in Pleasantville, NY ca. 2009.
Date: 2005 December 15-2009
Oral history interview with Esther Weisz Grun
Oral History
