Olga L. Holocaust testimony (HVT-464) [videorecording] / interviewed by Judie Wayman, January 1, 1985.

Cleveland, Ohio : National Council of Jewish Women, Holocaust Archive Project, 1985.

1 videorecording (2 hr., 39 min.) : col.

English

Associated material: Lebovitz, Olga. Interview 6423. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Access at https://vha.usc.edu.

Videotape testimony of Olga L., who was born in Berehove, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in approximately 1919, one of seven children. She recalls festive holiday celebrations; antisemitic incidents; working in a law office; Hungarian occupation in 1938; anti-Jewish restrictions; helping one brother escape to Palestine; obtaining documents to emigrate to England; remaining with her parents so another brother could escape; her brother-in-law's murder while attempting to escape; her sister and niece moving in; her twin brothers' conscription into a Hungarian slave labor battalion; her father's arrest; her boss obtaining his release; her youngest brother's conscription; German occupation in March 1944; paying a non-Jew to hide her niece; ghettoization; a policeman bringing her niece to them; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her sister, niece, and parents (they were gassed); transfer to Peterswaldau; slave labor in a munitions factory; a severe beating; hospitalization; a kapo warning her to leave the hospital prior to a deportation; wanting to die; a friend switching jobs with her; liberation by Soviet troops in May 1945; briefly living in Reichenbach (presently Dzierżoniów, Poland); traveling to Bratislava, Budapest, then home; reunion with her youngest brother and boyfriend; marriage; illegally traveling to Prague, then Litoměřice in January 1946; her son's birth; and emigration to the United States in 1949. Ms. L. discusses lecturing about the Holocaust, but stopping when it became "commercialized." She shows a photograph.

June 01, 2002

Olga L. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-464). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Olga L. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-464). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)