Harry M. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Harry M., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1920. He recounts his United States citizenship through his father; participation in Jewish athletics; pervasive antisemisitm; German occupation in March 1938; giving a Gestapo official their expired passport to ensure they could leave; leaving with his parents for Paris the same day; traveling to the United States three weeks later; arranging for relatives and his fiancee to join them; military conscription in 1943; infantry service in Europe; assignment as an interpreter in April 1945; choosing not to shoot German POWs when given the option; another Jewish soldier beating an SS member; liberating a POW camp in Iserlohn; observing piles of corpses; liberating female death march survivors in Volary; shock at their condition and their story; transporting the few survivors to a German hospital; forcing local townspeople to bury the dead; working in the military government in Ulm; repatriating German refugees to the Soviet zone; and returning to the United States. Mr. M. discusses difficulties that Austrian Jews had conceiving of genocide despite knowledge of Nazi ideology; knowing nothing about the Holocaust prior to meeting survivors; and moral differences between war crimes and racial or religious genocide.

2 videocassettes