Miland B. Holocaust testimony

Identifier
HVT 0266
Language of Description
English
Level of Description
Collection
Source
EHRI Partner

Abstract

Videotape testimony of Miland B., who was born in Mukacheve, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in 1927 to a Hasidic family of five children. He recounts antisemitic violence; Hungarian occupation in 1938; anti-Jewish restrictions, including confiscation of the family business; apprenticeship to a watchmaker; clandestinely observing Jewish holidays; three-week ghettoization; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation from his parents and younger brothers; encountering his sister; urging her to stay alive; slave labor on a vegetable farm; public hangings; the suicide of a friend's father; encounters with Josef Mengele; losing track of his sister; the death march in January 1945; train transfer to Gross-Rosen; observing cannibalism; volunteering to carry corpses to obtain food; transfer to Zittau; slave labor in an airplane factory; sabotaging the airplane parts; abandonment by the guards; walking to town; a German officer giving them food and warning them to return to the camp so they would not be killed; liberation by Soviet troops who raped some female prisoners; traveling to Bratislava, then Budapest; learning his sister was alive; reunion with her in Mukacheve; emigration to join relatives in the United States in May 1947; and bringing his sister to the U.S. Mr. B. discusses details of camp life; not sharing particular experiences which are too humiliating; and denying God and orthodoxy after the war, but later believing in God in his own way.

Extent and Medium

1 videocassette

Conditions Governing Access

This testimony is open with permission.

Conditions Governing Reproduction

Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive. This testimony can only be used for educational purposes.

Rules and Conventions

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Process Info

  • compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

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Genre

This description is derived directly from structured data provided to EHRI by a partner institution. This collection holding institution considers this description as an accurate reflection of the archival holdings to which it refers at the moment of data transfer.