Testimony of Rita (Halbersberg) Zeltzer, born in Kiel, Germany in 1931, regarding her experiences as a child in Berlin, in Antwerp, in a village in the Diepenbeek area, in a monastery in Gellick and in other places

Testimony of Rita (Halbersberg) Zeltzer, born in Kiel, Germany in 1931, regarding her experiences as a child in Berlin, in Antwerp, in a village in the Diepenbeek area, in a monastery in Gellick and in other places Rise to power of the Nazi Party, 1933; deportation to Berlin with her family; anti-Jewish legislation; publication of Nazi propaganda; abuse of people on the street by Hitlerjugend members; Kristallnacht, November 1938; escape to Antwerp; death of her mother; German occupation, May 1940; detention of her father, and his release; capture and deportation with her father and sister on a train to an unknown destination; explosion of the railroad tracks in the Diepenbeek area by the Belgian underground; dispersion of the deportees in a village by a priest; murder of 13 of the village's young men for hiding the Jews in the village; transfer to a hiding place in a monastery in Gellick along with her sister; her father joins the Belgian underground; capture of her father along with the priest; death of her father in Bergen-Belsen camp; life in the monastery; she undergoes the Christian baptism ceremony; appropriation of a section of the monastery by the Germans in 1943; liberation by the US Army, September 1944; Life after the war while using a non-Jewish identity; aliya to Israel, 1949.