Violette J. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2157) [videorecording] / interviewed by Annette Wieviorka, Régine Waintrater and Geneviève Decrop, February 5, 1992.

Paris, France : Témoignages pour mémoire, 1992.

1 videorecording (2 hr., 10 min.) : col.

French

Videotape testimony of Violette J., who was born in 1925. She remembers speaking Hungarian at home in Le Havre; violin lessons; her father's draft after the outbreak of war; fleeing to Brittany with her mother in June 1940 with her mother; returning to Le Havre a month later; her father's return; their move to Paris in 1942; obtaining false papers; living with her uncle in Lille; their denouncement and arrest; transfer to Brussels, then Malines; deportation to Auschwitz; separation from her parents (she never saw them again); several work assignments; brief hospitalization; auditioning for the women's orchestra; difficult relations with non-Jewish musicians and close bonds among the Jews; the leadership of Alma Rosé and Fania Fénelon; playing during roll calls; performing for the inmates on Sundays; transfer of the Jewish orchestra members to Bergen-Belsen in November 1944; becoming a kapo; liberation by British troops; and hospitalization. Mrs. J. recounts her wish to kill the person who denounced her family regardless of the consequences; friends asking her not to recount her experiences; gradually sharing her experiences with her children; and her disagreement with the perspective of Fénelon's book.

June 01, 2002

Violette J. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2157). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Violette J. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2157). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)

Musicians.