Celina H. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2521) [videorecording] / interviewed by Naomi Rappaport, February 5, 1993.

New York, N.Y. : A Living Memorial to the Holocaust-Museum of Jewish Heritage, 1993.

1 videorecording (1 hr., 29 min.) : col.

English

Additional materials and photographs are available in the repository.

Videotape testimony of Celina H., a twin, who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1933. She remembers an assimilated, affluent life; German invasion in 1939; fleeing to her mother's family in Białystok in the Soviet-occupied zone; her father's deportation to Siberia; German invasion; ghettoization; roaming the ghetto and outside with her sister (they looked "Aryan"); hiding during the first Aktion; her mother sending her to a farm family and her sister elsewhere; returning when it seemed safe; her mother obtaining false papers for them; she and her sister being smuggled out; living with a Catholic woman in Osipy Lepartowizna for about two years; becoming a fervent Catholic; placement at another farm when there was danger of exposure; returning to her foster family after liberation by Soviet troops; her aunt bringing them back to Białystok; hearing from her father; moving to Łódź, Munich, then Bad Reichenhall; reunion with her father; and emigrating to the United States. Mrs. H. discusses her initial refusal to acknowledge that she was Jewish; gradually assuming her Jewish identity; gratitude to the woman who hid them as well as hostility toward her because of her own self hatred resulting from her antisemitism; sharing parts of her experience with her sons; continuing hostility toward Poland and Germany; and sorrow that her mother did not survive.

June 01, 2002

Celina H. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2521). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Celina H. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2521). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)