Testimony of Gitel (Vinkler) Stern, born in Marghita, Romania, 1928, regarding her experiences in the Oradea Ghetto, Auschwitz, Fallersleben and Salzwedel

Testimony of Gitel (Vinkler) Stern, born in Marghita, Romania, 1928, regarding her experiences in the Oradea Ghetto, Auschwitz, Fallersleben and Salzwedel Life before the war; Jewish community; hosting yeshiva students for meals; learns in a Beit Yaakov school. Life under Romanian rule and the Iron Guard; annexation to Hungary, August 1940; anti-Jewish decrees and restrictions; drafting of men to forced labor; German occupation, March 1944; yellow badge; relations with non-Jewish neighbors; deportation to the Oradea Ghetto by Hungarian gendarmes; ghetto life including confiscation of valuables; deportation to Auschwitz by train; separation from her parents and sister; rescue of her sister by a Kapo; meeting with an inmate in the Sonderkommando; deaths of her parents and sister in Auschwitz; transfer to Fallersleben; camp life including labor in a weapons factory; supervision by Wehrmacht soldiers; attitude of the guards towards the female inmates in the factory; liberation by the US Army at Salzwedel. Move to a DP camp at Bergen-Belsen; the fate of her brother; hospitalization because of a sore in her foot; return to Romania; marriage, 1946; her husband joins Poalei Agudat Israel; aliya attempt to Eretz Israel from Burgas; detention in Cyprus; her daughter's birth in Cyprus; aliya to Israel, 1949.