Janine K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2158) [videorecording] / interviewed by Josette Zarka and Régine Waintrater, December 6, 1991.

Paris, France : Témoignages pour mémoire, 1991.

1 videorecording (2 hr., 4 min.) : col.

French

This testimony is in French.

Videotape testimony of Janine K., who was born in 1921. She recalls living in Paris; her parents' divorce; living with her mother; Jewish holiday and Sabbath observances at her grandmother's; German occupation; fleeing to a village outside Paris; working as a nanny for a farmer (her parents had been deported separately and did not return); denunciation; imprisonment with criminals; transfer to Drancy; reunion with her brother; their deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation by gender; slave labor while freezing in winter and burning from the sun in summer; long appels; her belief that she would survive; social divisions by class and nationalities; “stealing” apples; transfer to Bergen-Belsen; living in tents; transfer to the French block; solidarity among French prisoners; singing the "Marseillaise" on July 14th; being beaten by a block leader; numerous daily deaths from typhus; contracting typhus and dysentery; liberation; recuperation in a British hospital; repatriation to France; reunion with her brother; and marriage in 1950. Mrs. K. notes her postwar nervous breakdown; difficulty discussing her experiences, even with her brother, husband, and children; frequent nightmares; and losing her belief in religion, although identifying as a Jew.

June 01, 2002

Janine K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2158). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Janine K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2158). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)