William S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of William S., who was born in Medzilaborce, Czechoslovakia in 1928, the oldest of five children. He describes his orthodox, middle-class family; attending a Jewish school; assisting at his father's store; his bar mitzvah; cordial relations with non-Jews; anti-Jewish laws, including expropriation of his father's business; deportation with his family to Auschwitz in 1942; remaining with his father (the others were killed); thinking he "was in hell"; forced labor; public executions; assignment to the bricklayers' school in Birkenau; assistance from fellow prisoners; learning of his father's death; hospitalization; being saved from selection by the man in charge; transport to Mauthausen in January 1945; assignment collecting corpses; transfer to another camp; liberation by United States troops; living with friends in Wels; briefly returning home; living in Michalovce for two years; and emigration to the United States, via Vienna, in 1950 with assistance from an American uncle. Mr. S. discusses recovering his bar mitzvah prayer book after the war.

3 videocassettes