Renée H. Edited Testimony (HVT- 8047)

From the point of view of the child that she was at the time, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen from Bratislava, Slovakia relates her wartime experiences. She tells how, in German- occupied Bratislava, she served as the "ears" of her deaf parents and younger sister, alerting them to impending round-ups of Jews. She speaks of her vain attempts to find shelter for her sister and herself after the deportation of her parents, and her voluntary surrender to the police in the hopes of being reunited with her parents in Auschwitz. She describes the life that she and her sister led in Bergen-Belsen, where, to her dismay, the train had taken them instead, and where they remained until their liberation. After the war she again had the sense of having been taken to the wrong place when, arriving in New York during a heat wave, she thought she was in Africa. But the voices of unfamiliar relatives calling, "Renée" signaled the beginning of her new life.