Antonia K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4338) [videorecording] / interviewed by Susan Millen and Joanne Weiner Rudof, August 17, 2005.

New Haven, Conn. : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 2005.

1 videorecording (1 hr., 15 min.) : col.

English

Videotape testimony of Antonia K., who was born in Worms, Germany in 1925. She recounts moving to her maternal grandparents' home in Nentershausen when she was eighteen months old; moving to Bunzlau (presently Bolesławiec) eight years later when her mother married a rabbi; anti-Jewish discrimination at school; the synagogue burning and her stepfather's brief deportation to Dachau on Kristallnacht; plans to join her maternal uncle in Palestine; traveling to Amsterdam to join her stepbrother while awaiting travel documents; German invasion; obtaining $425,000 from maternal relatives in Switzerland and Palestine to avoid deportation (her stepbrother married a non-Jew and was hidden throughout the war); receiving deportation orders for her alone; a Catholic physician removing her appendix to prevent her deportation; her parents' arrest; joining them so they would not be killed; deportation to Westerbork in April 1943, then to Bergen-Belsen in January 1944; disbelief this was happening to her; forced labor in a factory, then removing corpses from barracks; separation into a group of 283 people; improved conditions; train transfer to Istanbul via Vienna, then to Palestine; marriage; emigration to the United States in 1959; and her parents' return to Germany. Ms. K. recalls her father organizing prayers in Bergen-Belsen on Yom Kippur; never discussing their war experiences; crediting her mother for their survival; continuing fear of large dogs due to her experiences; and her grandmother and two great aunts surviving Theresienstadt. She shows photographs, documents, and the diary her father kept throughout the war.

November 16, 2005

Antonia K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4338). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Antonia K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4338). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)