Irene S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-886) [videorecording] / interviewed by Brenda Steifel and Peggy Morton, May 3, 1987.

New York, N.Y. : Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, 1987.

1 videorecording (53 min.) : col.

English

Videotape testimony of Irene S., who was born in 1914 in Ulm, Germany. She recalls an affluent childhood; being forced to leave Germany when Hitler came to power because her father was a Czech citizen; emigration to Vienna, then Czechoslovakia; work in her uncle's summer resort for five years; deportation to a Polish work camp in 1939; and escape with a Polish and a Czech prisoner. Mrs. S. relates finding her parents in Prague; obtaining false papers; learning her brothers had emigrated to Palestine; meeting a former neighbor who exposed her; incarceration in Terezín; caring for a German officer's child; escape to Prague with the aid of the German officer for her promise to help him after the war; reunion with her parents; short incarcerations in several work camps; joining the underground; and her inability to save the German who had saved her (he was shot during the German retreat). She describes her marriage; emigration to the United States in 1948; her brothers' experiences; relating her experiences to her children in 1978 and 1979 through a writing class; her husband's reluctance to talk about the war; and her dislike of books about the Holocaust by those who did not experience it.

June 01, 2002

Irene S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-886). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Irene S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-886). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)