Paul S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Paul S., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1926. Mr. S. recounts his father's early prominence as a Russian Bolshevik; losing favor; his emigration to Germany; his mother's death during his birth; his family's emigration to Juan-les-Pins in 1933; a secular childhood (he was not circumcised); moving to Paris; completing high school; arrest in 1943; transfer to Drancy; forming close friendships; an intense social life in Drancy; deportation to Auschwitz two weeks later, then to Monowitz; the head kapo favoring him due to his fluent German (he saved his life six times); losing contact with his friends; slave labor for I. G. Farben; exhaustion, cold, and humiliation; hospitalization for hepatitis (from the tattooing); his best friend's death; continuing ailments; assistance from a prisoner nurse and doctor; placement in a convalescent room; close relations with other French men in that room; discussions of music and poetry; passing a test for assignment to the chemists' unit; a beating for speaking to English POWs; his privileged status; a death march to Gleiwitz in January 1945; train transport in open cars to Buchenwald; Czechs throwing them food from overpasses; briefly losing hope; assistance from German political prisoners; removing his identification as a Jew to avoid further transports; liberation by United States troops; traveling to Longuyon, then Paris; and processing at Hotel Lutetia.

3 videocassettes