Peter B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Peter B., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1928. He recounts his mother's foresight in not having him circumcised, which later saved his life; pervasive antisemitism; his parents' frequent discussions of wanting to escape (one uncle and his family did); anti-Jewish restrictions; his family's conversion to Catholicism in 1939 to protect themselves; attending Catholic education classes (his "soul was executed in the process"), then a Catholic school; feeling persecuted for no reason since he never experienced Jewish cultural or religious life and did not feel like a Jew; the concentration of Jews leading his parents to decide to assume new identities; working in a factory using false papers; not knowing where his parents were; a draft notice from the Hungarian military; learning his parents were in hiding; joining them; the non-Jewish building superintendent providing food and water, and warning them of Nazi raids; and liberation. Mr. B. discusses the deaths of almost all his relatives during the war; suppressing his feelings and not identifying as a Jew for years due to fear and shame; finding hundreds of documents of family history in Hungary when his father died at age ninety; and continuing Hungarian antisemitism.

1 videocassette