Ruth K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-835) [videorecording] / interviewed by Frances Proctor Cohen and Sara Moss Herz, March 19, 1987.

New Haven, Conn. : Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, 1987.

1 videorecording (2 hr., 26 min.) : col.

English

Associated material: Klemens, Ruth. Interview 51777. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Access at https://vha.usc.edu.

Videotape testimony of Ruth K., who was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1927. Mrs. K. discusses the anti-Nazi activities of her father, Alfred Wiener; the family's move to Amsterdam in 1934; prewar life there; her acquaintance with Anne Frank; her father's establishment of the Jewish Central Information Office; and his unsuccessful efforts to relocate the family before the German occupation. She relates helping her mother burn her father's papers (he was in England); increasing restrictions against Jews; friends going into hiding; deportation to Westerbork in 1943; and being forced to help load transports to other camps. She describes the family's transfer to Bergen-Belsen in early 1944; harsh conditions; encountering Anne Frank; her family's inclusion in an exchange in January 1945; journeying across Germany; her mother's death from sickness and exhaustion in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland; sailing from Marseille to the United States; and reunion with her father. Mrs. K. tells of her education in America and England; marriage to an Australian; returning to the United States in 1959 after ten years in Sydney; and the establishment of the Wiener Library, based on her father's documentation activities.

June 01, 2002

Ruth K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-835). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Ruth K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-835). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)