Emmanuel R. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Emmanuel R., who was born in Bardejov, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1921, one of five children. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; attending public school and cheder; antisemitic harassment; apprenticing at a lumber business; moving to Mizrachi training facilities in Michalovce, then Poprad, preparing for emigration to Palestine; conscription into the Sixth Slovak Brigade in October 1940; slave labor digging canals in Sva?ty? Jur, then in a brick factory near Bratislava; his family's evacuation to Z?ilina in 1944; visiting them briefly (he never saw his parents and younger brother again); hiding his sister as a Catholic (he obtained papers for her); escaping to join the Slovak uprising; capture; incarceration in Sered; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; a friend giving him extra bread; a Soviet POW stealing potatoes from him; assignment to the kommando blowing up the crematoria; a death march to Gleiwitz; transport in open trains to Mauthausen; Czech workers in Vi?tkovice throwing them food en route; transfer to Plattling; slave labor digging pits; hospitalization; liberation by United States troops; traveling to Prague then Bratislava; reunion with his sister and one brother; traveling to Pies?t?any; recuperating in Trenc?ianske? Teplice; and emigration to the United States to join his uncle. Mr. R. discusses attributing his survival to not thinking and taking "things as they come" in camps; physical aliments resulting from his experiences; wanting to forget his experiences in order to keep his sanity; and recently recovering letters written by his father to his uncle prior to and during the war.

1 videocassette