Paula K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2455) [videorecording] / interviewed by Alys Kremer Grossman and Beatrice Harrison, August 6, 1992.

Mahwah, N.J. : Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 1992.

1 videorecording (1 hr., 56 min.) : col.

English

Associated material: Kempinski, Paula. Interview 9970. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Access at https://vha.usc.edu.

Videotape testimony of Paula K., who was born in Kłodawa, Poland in 1924. She recalls German invasion in 1939; German soldiers severely beating, then killing the rabbi and others; expulsion from their home; non-Jews providing food for her family; twenty months in a forced labor camp; being beaten by a guard; crocheting for civilian workers to earn extra food; a Polish woman who often assisted her; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; hiding injuries to avoid selection; an SS woman who gave her extra food; transfer to Czechoslovakia in late 1944; sabotaging their work in an airplane factory; and liberation by Soviet troops. Mrs. K. describes returning to Kłodawa; a warm reception from her neighbors; marriage; fleeing to Berlin to escape antisemitic attacks; her daughters' births; and emigration to the United States in 1951. She discusses her reluctance to speak of her experience until a gathering of Holocaust survivors in Israel in 1981, and her subsequent efforts to educate children about the Holocaust as a memorial to her parents.

June 01, 2002

Paula K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2455). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Paula K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2455). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)