Sylvia M. Holocaust testimony (HVT-526) [videorecording] / interviewed by Sidney Elsner, January 14, 1985.

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

1 videorecording (1 hr., 57 min.) : col.

English

Associated material: Malcmacher, Sylvia. Interview 15990. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Access at https://vha.usc.edu.

Videotape testimony of Sylvia M., who was born in Vilna, Poland (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in approximately 1926, one of three sisters. She recounts attending a Jewish school; increasing antisemitism in the late 1930s; Soviet occupation in 1939; attending free public high school; brief Lithuanian independence; an antisemitic riot; Soviet reoccupation in 1940; German invasion in 1941; her father's forced labor; learning her uncle had been killed with many others; ghettoization in September 1941; her older sister smuggling food; transfer to Keilis due to her older sister's privileged position a furrier; her younger sister's selection (she never saw her again); deportation with her parents and older sister to Rīga, then Stutthof; separation from her father (she never saw him again); her sister risking her life to obtain extra food for their mother; transfer to Mühldorf; Hungarian prisoners sharing food; slave labor washing clothes; liberation by United States troops; living in Feldafing displaced persons camp; learning her parents and older sister had not survived; attending an ORT school; marriage to a survivor in 1946; her daughter's birth in 1948; and emigration to the United States in 1949. Ms. M. discusses nightmares resulting from her experiences, and not sharing her experiences with anyone, including her children, until they were older.

June 01, 2002

Sylvia M. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-526). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Sylvia M. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-526). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)