Bernard and Henry S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-527) [videorecording] / interviewed by Batik Woller and Gloria Demby, November 4, 1984.

New York, N.Y. : Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, 1984.

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

English

Associated material: Schanzer, Henry. Interview 37130. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Access at https://vha.usc.edu.

Videotape testimony of Bernard and Henry S., twins who were born in Liège, Belgium in 1935. They detail their close, extended family; the German invasion; their escape; and settling in Saint-Etienne, France with the families of two uncles. They describe changes in 1942; being placed with a non-Jewish family; their father's and uncle's arrest and mother's evasion of a German round-up; their cousin's release from Drancy with fifty other children through intervention of the Cardinal of Lyon; living in an orphanage in Saint-Etienne, on a farm where they were mistreated, and an orphanage in Grenoble (all through the aid of OSE); their mother's experiences going from convent to convent; and her eventual meeting with a woman from Saint-Etienne, who hid the twin's sister and cousin, and arranged to place the two boys with her own mother in Saint Pals-de-Mons, where they remained for the duration of the war. They recall their postwar reunion with their mother and sister; the difficult realization of their father's death in Auschwitz; emigration to the United States in 1946; and the hardships their mother faced in raising four children alone (their cousin accompanied them). They relate their sister's efforts to honor their rescuers with a medal from Yad Vashem; their lack of fear during the war because they were together and their rescuers were such fine people; and the importance of their own children's religious education.

June 01, 2002

Bernard and Henry S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-527). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Bernard and Henry S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-527). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)