Ursula Levy testimony

The woman being interviewed in this video is Ursula Levy, a Jewish woman and a survivor of the Holocaust. She was born in Asulaberk Germany, May 11th 1935. Her father was captured during Kristallnacht, and passed away due to exposure to cold temperatures . After Kristallnacht Ursula`s mother, Lucia sent her and her brother George to live in a convent for children in Holland because she felt that it was not safe for them to stay. Ursula lived at the convent four years before the Nazis` invaded Holland in 1943. Officers came to take Jewish children to a concentration camp including Ursula and her brother. Ursula was separated from her brother at first. A friend from the convent, Mr. Vanmagnenburg came to visit her in the camp and suggested to Nazi officers that her and her brother didn’t look Jewish, and their father was Catholic and lived in American. These suggestions made the officers question their status, and Ursula and George were moved to special area. In 1944 Ursula and her brother were moved to a special camp in Holland called Bagnenbelsen. Because the Nazis` believed they might be able to use them as leverage against the Allies they were given small amounts of food daily. In 1945 they were given an injection and put on a train. When recalling this memory Ursula said “The train would stop sometimes for days and we would get out and we would have been able to escape, but we never thought of escaping. This is how we had lost the ability to plan, to reason. We just always went back to the train”. While on the train she heard people shouting, and saw that it was Russian soldiers. Ursula expressed her feelings and said “ It was such an experience to be free, to have survived, but at the same time it was sad because originally there were 2,600 people on the train, by the time we left Troiblitz there were 600”. Ursula and her brother were homeless until they went to live with her aunt and uncle in Chicago. Ursula sought professional help to help her deal with the death of her mother, and her experiences during the Holocaust.