Isidor R. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Isidor R., who was born in 1920 in Bilky, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine), the oldest of nine children. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; attending Hebrew school from the age of four; Hungarian occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions; draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion in 1941; transfer to Kos?ice; slave labor building a railroad; transfer to Budapest; contact with the Jewish community; occasional visits home; volunteering for privileged work as a sign-painter; German invasion in 1944; learning his family had been deported to the Berehove ghetto; visiting them on leave; transfer to the Budapest ghetto; hiding during Arrow Cross round-ups; Allied bombardments; liberation by Soviet troops; working as a translator for the Soviet army; reunion with two sisters in Prague (the only survivors of his family); antisemitic harassment in Bratislava; organizing a Deror-ha-Bonim group; working for UNRRA; traveling illegally with the group to Vienna; and emigration to the United States. Mr. R. discusses maintaining his faith; holding a Torah recovered from his town during a visit to Israel; and writing poetry about the Holocaust and his thesis about Bilky. He shows photographs, his thesis, and reads from a letter his mother had sent him prior to her deportation.

2 videocassettes