George K. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of George K., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1922, one of four children. He recounts his family's affluence; living in Pa?pa; increasing antisemitism and anti-Jewish legislation; draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion for three months in 1943, despite his and his father's exemption due to the latter's World War I military service; German invasion in March 1944; ghettoization; transfer to a brick factory; forced labor; transfer with his father to Sa?rva?r with his father; deportation to Auschwitz; slave labor digging trenches and building barracks; frequent beatings; he and another prisoner trading with Polish civilians for extra food; transfer to the kitchen; encountering his brother, and Mary K., his future wife; transfer with his brother to Lieberose; his brother's hospitalization (he never saw him again); transfer to Sachsenhausen; slave labor in a factory; a German overseer giving him extra food; public executions of Soviets who sabotaged the work; liberation from a death march by United States troops; working for them as a translator; traveling to Budapest via Leipzig and Prague; reunion with Mary K.; returning home (only his twin sister had survived); marriage; the death of his first child; reopening his family's factory; its confiscation by the Communists; escaping to Austria during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956; and emigration to the United States.
Extent and Medium
2 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony is open with permission.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- K., George, -- 1922-
Corporate Bodies
- Lieberose (Concentration camp)
- Sachsenhausen (Concentration camp)
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Concentration camp inmates -- Family relationships.
- Death marches.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Atrocities.
- Brothers.
- Fathers and sons.
- Jews -- Hungary -- Pápa.
- Jewish ghettos.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Conscript labor -- Hungary.
- Forced labor.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Men.
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Postwar experiences.
- Mutual aid.
- Aid by non-Jews.
Places
- Sárvár (Hungary : Concentration camp)
- Austria.
- Pápa ghetto.
- Leipzig (Germany)
- Hungary -- History -- Revolution, 1956 -- Personal narratives.
- Pápa (Hungary)
- Prague (Czech Republic)
- Hungary.
- Budapest (Hungary)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat