Renee B. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1496) [videorecording] / interviewed by Dana L. Kline and Lucille B. Ritvo, April 22, 1991.

New Haven, Conn. : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1991.

1 videorecording (1 hr., 38 min.) : col.

English

Videotape testimony of Renee B., who was born in Duisburg, Germany, in 1927. Mrs. B. recalls her discomfort as the only Jew at a Catholic primary school; older Jewish friends who left Germany in the 1930s; fleeing with her parents on Kristallnacht to a former housekeeper's home; commuting daily to a Jewish school in Cologne after 1939; detention in a slaughterhouse before deportation; and arrival at the Rīga ghetto in December 1941. She describes her family's narrow escape from a selection; seeing the bodies of Jewish policemen executed for an attempted uprising; transfer to a railroad work camp at Priekule in mid-1943; surviving a selection with her mother (her father was killed); evacuation by barge to Stutthof in summer 1944; transfer to another railroad camp at Stolp; separation from her mother after their march back to Stutthof; a death march; being placed aboard mined boats on the Baltic; and liberation by British troops after she came ashore at Neustadt. She recounts developing a story of Swiss origins which she told postwar acquaintances to avoid explaining her Holocaust experience. The testimony includes Mrs. B's written narratives, poetry and painting.

June 01, 2002

Renee B. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1496). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Renee B. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1496). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)

Artists.