Zelda S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3228) [videorecording] / interviewed by Michèle Ganem and Berthe Burko-Falcman, January 12, 1995.

Paris, France : Témoignages pour mémoire, 1995.

1 videorecording (1 hr., 15 min.) : col.

French

Videotape testimony of Zelda S., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1930, the youngest of four children. She recounts her family's move to Luxembourg shortly after her birth; their return to Łódź in 1938 (one sister remained); German invasion; ghettoization; her brother's deportation in 1942 (she never saw him again); joining a group of children tutored by teenagers in the cemetery; forced factory labor; public hangings; deportation to Auschwitz with her family in August 1944; separation from her parents (she never saw them again); remaining with her sister; frequent appels; transfer to another camp without her sister; slave labor in a factory; sabotaging the work, thinking she would be killed and see her mother; receiving extra food from a civilian supervisor; reunion with her sister; finding food for her; a death march to Bergen-Belsen; liberation; contracting typhus; her sister's death; transfer to Stockholm; recuperating for two and a half years in hospitals and sanatoria; emigrating to join her other sister in France; and several years of recuperation in sanatoria. Mrs. S. discusses the importance to her survival of taking risks; reluctance to share her story with her children; pervasive painful memories; nightmares and fragile health resulting from the Holocaust; and the impossibility of truly conveying her experiences.

June 01, 2002

Zelda S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3228). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Zelda S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3228). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)