Cecilia K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-281) [videorecording] / interviewed by Doris Simon, June 1, 1983.

Lawrence, N. Y. : Second Generation of Long Island, 1983.

1 videorecording (1 hr., 51 min.) : col.

English

This testimony can only be used for educational purposes.

Videotape testimony of Cecelia K., who was born in Yasinya, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1925, the youngest of six children. She describes her family's orthodoxy; attending public school; her father's death in 1936; membership in Hashomer Hatzair; a brother and sister emigrating to Palestine in 1939; Hungarian occupation; losing their citizenship; her mother's and sister's arrests; a family friend obtaining their release; her brother hiding her with her mother in Hořice for about eight months; moving to Nyíregyháza when her brother's arrest was imminent; working in a dental lab (the owner concealed their identities); her mother joining a sister in Khust; traveling to Budapest to join another sister; learning she was in jail in Serbia; visiting her; a lawyer in Subotica arranging her release; working in a dental lab in Budapest; becoming engaged; her boss's non-Jewish wife offering to hide her; traveling to Khust to join her family; ghettoization; assistance from the Joint; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; a prisoner suggesting her sister give her baby to her mother; separation from the men, her mother, and nephew; her sister realizing her child and mother had been killed; preventing her from committing suicide; their transfer to a children's barrack; being forced to watch a fatal beating; transfer to Nuremberg; slave labor in a munitions factory; transfer to Holleischen; liberation by partisans, then British troops; traveling with her sister to Prague; and reunion with her fiancé. Ms. K. discusses mentally composing poems in camps in order not to think; the importance to her survival of helping her sister; not sharing her story with her children; and writing poems about her experiences.

June 01, 2002

Cecilia K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-281). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Cecilia K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-281). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)