Pola N. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3064) [videorecording] / interviewed by Jean Gerber, June 13, 1984.

Vancouver, B.C. : Vancouver Holocaust Centre Society, 1984.

1 videorecording (1 hr., 40 min.) : col.

English

Videotape testimony of Pola N., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1919, one of seven children. She recalls attending a Jewish school; German invasion; two brothers and a sister fleeing to the Soviet zone; ghettoization; being smuggled out by a non-Jewish friend; living in Kielce; sending packages to her family; smuggling back to the ghetto once; deportation from the Kielce ghetto to Auschwitz; meaningless slave labor; friends assisting her at appell when she was sick; transfer to Ravensbrück; slave labor in a munitions factory; a German soldier shooting a Jewish child in the face, a memory which still haunts her; being taken to Malmö, Sweden, via Denmark in the Bernadotte prisoner exchange; kindness from the Danes and Swedes; contacting her aunt in New York with assistance from the Red Cross; learning her siblings who had gone to the Soviet Union had survived; reunion with them in Germany; marriage; and emigration to Canada. Ms. N. discusses camp life; her emotional numbness in ghettos and camps; the importance of being with friends to her survival (they remain close); sharing her experiences with her children; and her pervasive sense of loss.

June 01, 2002

Pola N. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3064). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Pola N. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3064). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)