Mirjam and David G. Holocaust testimony (HVT-202) [videorecording] / interviewed by Dori Laub and Laurel Vlock, May 3, 1980.

New Haven, Conn. : Holocaust Survivors Film Project, 1980.

1 videorecording (2 hr., 34 min.) : col.

English

Associated material: Geismar, Mirjam. Interview 33758. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Access at https://vha.usc.edu.

Videotape testimony of Mirjam G., who was born in 1931 in Dutch Indonesia, and her husband David G., who was born in Freiburg, Germany in 1930 and grew up in Amsterdam. Mrs. G. speaks of her early childhood in Rotterdam; the German bombing of Rotterdam; her father's dismissal from his job in 1941; and her family's move to Voorburg, near the Hague, where she attended a Jewish school. She describes her three years of hiding in various places in Holland apart from her family; an encounter with an SS guard; and her impressions of the poverty in Haarlem. She also recounts her postwar reunion with her family and her emigration to Israel two years after the war. Mr. G. recalls the bombing of Rotterdam at the outbreak of the war; the gradual institution of anti-Jewish measures in Holland; the prevailing anti-Nazi sentiment in Holland; and a squelched Dutch pro-Jewish protest. He describes the disappearance of Jewish children into hiding; his awareness of suicides among Jews; his bar mitzvah in 1942; his harassment by a German; and the deportation to Westerbork of several relatives. He tells of going into hiding in April 1943; his internment in Dutch Nazi headquarters; his flight to north Holland; and his life in hiding in a farm community of Friesland. He relates being led by the Dutch underground to Elst; liberation there by Canadians in May 1945; his postwar reunion with his mother; and coming to terms with the death of his father.

June 01, 2002

Mirjam and David G. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-202). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Mirjam and David G. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-202). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)