Brinberg, Georgette - Oral History of a Holocaust Survivor
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn60315
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:32:00
- Collection
- WITNESS TO HISTORY COLLECTION (MHMC-02)
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- moving images
- Physical Description
- 01:32:00
- Language
- English; French
- Notes
- Georgette Brinberg (née Tepicht) was born on June 10, 1938 in the mining town of Villerupt in northern France. In the 1940s, when the town was attacked by Germany, her mother, father and older sister fled to Paris. Although she was young, she remembers that her father in 1940 was rounded-up and sent to a working camp, and eventually to Auschwitz. In July 1942, she, her sister and mother were rounded up and sent off to the Vélodrome d’Hiver where she stayed for a week until she was split up from her mother and destined to be sent to Auschwitz. Fortunately, Georgette and her sister were able to flee the Vel d’Hiv and were sent to Morée. She does not remember how she ended up there, but she does know that she was in hiding with her sister, and that there was a constant fear of being captured. She had to learn all the Catholic rites in order to pass off as a Catholic girl. In 1944, about the time of the liberation of France, she once more fled Morée and returned to Paris after jumping onto an American truck. Once she arrived in Paris with her sister, they sought out their grandmother who was still in hiding. All three stayed in hiding until the end of the war, and eventually moved to Israel in 1948. In Israel, she joined the Kibbutz – a collective community traditionally based on agriculture. She stayed there, learning Yiddish, until the 1950s. She eventually decided to move to Canada where her sister lived with her husband. In 1955, she finally arrived in Montreal where she went to business school and worked in the Quebec Order of Chartered Accountants. She married in 1957 and had three kids. In subsequent years, she researched the whereabouts of her family and tried to find a trace of those that helped her. She even returned to Paris to learn more about her past and her family legacy. She feels that her story should be told for future generations to remember, in her words: “if I can tell my grandchildren, then why not everyone [else]?”
- Accession No.
- WTH-462
- Name Access
- Brinberg, Georgette
- Places
- Villerupt, France, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
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