William F. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of William F., who was born deaf in a small town near Sa?toraljau?jhely, Hungary, in 1910. Mr. F. describes his childhood in a large family (two brothers were also deaf); learning from his father to read Hebrew for his bar mitzvah; being self-taught because he lacked a formal education; becoming a leatherworker; his pride at living independently in Budapest at age eighteen; growing antisemitism; fleeing to Czechoslovakia in late 1937; courtship and marriage; and establishing a business in Pies?t?any. He recalls a Christian maid who helped him and his wife avoid deportation in 1940; escaping to Romania and then Yugoslavia; boarding a ship with 1200 Jews fleeing to Palestine; being shipwrecked on an uncharted Aegean island; rescue by an Italian ship; detention in camps on Rhodes and another island; surviving a bomb attack; liberation; and an army captain who helped him and his wife travel to America in 1944. He relates internment in Oswego; learning of the loss in Europe of nearly all his family; a wealthy Hungarian immigrant who helped them remain in America after the war; reunion with his sole surviving sister in Israel in 1963; his second marriage; moving to Israel in 1972; and returning to America after the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

2 videocassettes (3/4" u-matic)