Dora S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4086) [videorecording] / interviewed by Cathy S. Gelbin and Sonja Miltenberger, July 15, 1997.

Potsdam, Germany : Moses Mendelssohn Zentrum für europäisch-jüdische Studien, Universität Potsdam, 1997.

1 videorecording (2 hr., 17 min.) : col.

German

This testimony is in German.

Videotape testimony of Dora S., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1913, the younger of two daughters. She recounts her father's emigration to the United States; his return; their move to Essen; vacationing in Sylt; attending private school; an antisemitic teacher giving her poor grades; joining the Jüdischer Jugendverband; her family's refusal to emigrate; her emigration to Amsterdam; assistance from the Jewish community; working as a maid, then a furrier; meeting her future husband, a Communist; working for Rote Hilfe/Roode Hulp; moving with him to Paris; his arrest by the French police; release stipulating they leave France within forty-eight hours; remaining illegally; their deportation to Rieucros; marriage in the camp; German invasion; transfer to Brens; escaping in 1942; joining a Polish resistance group, then an Austrian one in Lyon; obtaining false papers; distributing anti-war propaganda; obtaining information from and recruiting German soldiers; working for the German military which provided her access to information and special status that she used for the resistance; liberation by United States troops; learning her husband had been killed trying to enter Switzerland; her son's birth; returning to Germany in 1946; remarriage; working as a translator for the Zentralkomitee of the SED; collecting testimonies of German resistance fighters; and testifying in the war crimes trial of Klaus Barbie in 1987. She notes her parents, sister, and her family were deported and killed, and never feeling Jewish until the Nazis came to power.

June 01, 2002

Dora S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4086). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Dora S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4086). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)