Serge K. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Serge K., who was born in Saint Mande?, France in 1929. He recalls his family's secular life; German invasion; fleeing with his family to Marseille via Argenton-sur-Creuse, Orle?ans, and Cha?teauroux; German bombardment en route; attending high school; joining the Jewish scouts (EIF); arrest with his family in May 1943; imprisonment; transfer to Drancy; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in July 1943; separation from his father, mother and sister (he never saw them again); a prisoner advising him to say he was older; a privileged assignment indoors; hospitalization; a Polish non-Jew sharing packages with him; a doctor and German non-Jewish prisoner saving him from selections; a privileged position in the hospital removing corpses and cleaning rooms; assignment to Canada Kommando; trying to help arriving prisoners (e.g. warning young women to give their children to others); public hangings; friendship with Greek Jews that helped him feel human; the Sonderkommando uprising in October 1944; transfer to Gross-Rosen; slave labor in a quarry, a forest, then the burial brigade; liberation in May 1945 by Soviet troops; repatriation to Hotel Lutetia in Paris via Bratislava and Plzen?; and living in an orphanage in Boulogne-Billancourt for four years, which helped him adjust to "normal" life. Mr. K discusses the camp hierarchy; his dual identity both as a survivor and as someone with everyday problems; and his negative Jewish identity, defined for him by antisemitism.

4 videocassettes