Manfred K. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Manfred K., who was born in Bremen, Germany to a Jewish father and Lutheran mother in 1928. He recounts his mother's conversion to Judaism; antisemitic regulations, including being banned from high school; his father's arrest on Kristallnacht; having to sell the family business and leave their apartment; his father's return the following August; his father's deportation to Buchenwald (he perished there in June 1940 and his effects were returned including a hidden diamond); being officially categorized as a Jew because he had belonged to a Jewish sport club (he had been baptized and his mother had the papers backdated to protect him); refusing to hide with an anti-Nazi uncle so that he could protect his mother; deportation to Theresienstadt in December 1944; slave labor; providing extra rations for a fellow prisoner on his birthday; liberation by Soviet troops in May 1945; returning home; and emigration with his mother to the United States in summer 1946. Mr. K. discusses his military career; confusion regarding his religious identity (his mother always considered herself Jewish); his daughter chiding him for not having shared his experiences with her sooner; and his belief not all Germans were perpetrators.

2 videocassettes