Ivan I. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Ivan I., who was born in Zrenjanin, Yugoslavia (presently Serbia) in 1929. He recounts cordial relations in an ethnically and religiously diverse community; his family's conversion to Christianity; their German affinity (his parents and grandfather attended German medical schools); his father's military service; German invasion in April 1941; his paternal grandparents' suicide; his aunt from Hungarian-occupied Novi Sad bringing him and his sister to live with her (he never saw his parents again); attending gymnasium using his baptismal papers; a massacre of Jews and Serbs in January 1942; German occupation in spring 1944; deportation to the Subotica ghetto, Baja, then Auschwitz in May; being told of the crematoria, but not believing it; transfer to Buchenwald about a week later; "losing" his yellow triangle (the Jewish badge), and replacing it with a red triangle (political prisoner); transfer to Magdeburg after ten days; slave labor in a Brabag factory; becoming weak and losing his will to live; transfer back to Buchenwald in September as unfit to work; a Yugoslav prisoner official arranging his transfer in October to Niederorschel where conditions were better; slave labor in an airplane factory; friendship with H. G. Adler and a French physician; an SS officer assisting them (the doctor testified for him after the war); transfer with Adler to Langenstein in February; Adler's privileged position as a secretary; Adler sharing food he received from guards and officials for whom he wrote poems; hiding during the evacuation in April; liberation by United States troops; and returning home in September. Mr. I. discusses camp jargon and hierarchies; moral questions involving survival; the influence of postwar images on memory; continuing friendships from the camps; and discovering an error in his International Tracing Service records in Arolsen.

4 videocassettes (3/4" u-matic)