Henri G. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Henri G., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1928. He recounts that his parents were Polish immigrants; uniformed Nazis beating his father in front of him in 1933; his father's deportation to Poland; destruction of their store and home on Kristallnacht; joining his father in Katowice; living with relatives in Przemys?l; Soviet occupation; German invasion; ghettoization; his parents efforts to protect him; having to bury murdered Jews after a mass killing; an attack by the dog of the ghetto Kommandant, Joseph Schwamberger; working for Schwamberger; deportation with his parents to Szebnie in 1943; transfer to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation from his mother (he never saw her again); slave labor with his father for Siemens; his father's hospitalization (he never saw him again); hospitalization; assistance from a prisoner doctor; assignment to the Canada Kommando, then a factory; a death march from Monowitz to Gleiwitz, then train transport to Buchenwald; assignment to search rubble in Weimar for civilians killed in Allied bombings; transfer to Spaichingen; escaping from a death march; assistance hiding from local Germans; liberation by French troops; staying in Bregenz and a displaced persons camp; joining relatives in Nice via Lyon; attending school in Chambon-sur-Lignon; moving to Israel, then Paris; marriage; and the births of three children. Mr. G. discusses having seen the best and worst of human beings; regret that he felt his parents had deserted him; unhappiness and suicidal wishes after the war and to the present time, despite his loving wife and children; his sense he "died there" and is a zombie; his son's difficulty understanding his feelings; and sadness that his grandson is not Jewish, thus ending his beloved grandfather's heritage.

4 videocassettes