Gabriel D. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Gabriel D., who was born in Hradec Kra?love?, Czechoslovakia in 1922. He recalls his father's death in 1935; moving to Prague in 1936; participation in Maccabi, a Zionist youth group; German occupation; his brother's and sister's emigration; his mother's death; living in a Maccabi commune; volunteering for deportation to Theresienstadt in November 1941 in order to be with his friends; overcrowding and starvation; deportations resulting in separation trauma; secret Maccabi meetings; cultural and educational activities; working as a gardener; participating in theater productions despite painful hunger; sham improvements for a Red Cross visit and Nazi filming; providing flowers for Eichmann from the garden; organizing a lending library; an unsuccessful attempt to establish an underground; organizing help for the elderly with his friends; contacts with Leo Baeck; keeping a diary (recovered after the war); and deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in October 1944. Mr. D. describes meaningless slave labor; transfer to Gleiwitz; the death march to Blechhammer; hiding during the evacuation; being discovered; posing as dead during a mass killing; receiving food from an escaped British POW and Soviet troops; and traveling to Katowice, Cze?stochowa, and Kos?ice. He discusses cultural life and organization of Terezi?n; his state of mind; the importance of friendship; and sharing his diary with his son.

5 videocassettes