Sonia P. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2298) [videorecording] / interviewed by Helen Cohn and Nancy Freed, May 3, 1991.

Houston, Tex. : Holocaust Education Center and Memorial Museum of Houston, 1991.

1 videorecording (3 hr., 3 min.) : col.

English

Associated material: Propis, Sonia. Interview 12546. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Access at https://vha.usc.edu.

Videotape testimony of Sonia P., who was born in Panevėžys, Lithuania in 1925. She recalls her Orthodox family background; attending Hebrew day school; helping in the family store in Troskunai; Soviet occupation; living with her brother while learning bookkeeping in Kovno; German occupation; learning her family perished in a mass murder; ghettoization; her brother's murder; forced labor at the airport; working two shifts to enable her sister-in-law to care for her niece; selections and killings; arranging, with others, for her niece to be hidden by non-Jews; forced labor with her sister-in-law in Kauen-Schanzen; witnessing the round-up of all children; deportation to a concentration camp with her sister and sister-in-law; transfers to several camps; and liberation in March 1945. Mrs. P. describes deciding not to return to Lithuania; working as an interpreter for the Soviets; fleeing with friends to Stettin; reunion with her sister-in-law and niece in Munich; working in the Zeilsheim displaced persons camp; assistance from UNRRA in contacting her aunt in South Africa; emigrating, with assistance from HIAS, to South Africa via Paris in 1947; marriage in 1950; and her children's births. She discusses her faith and reluctance to share her experiences with her children.

June 01, 2002

Sonia P. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2298). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Sonia P. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2298). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)