Jacques S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Jacques S., who was born in Thessalonikē, Greece in 1913, one of four children. In addition to information in a previously cataloged testimony, Mr. S. recounts playing violin as a youth in a Maccabi orchestra; his Greek commander issuing him, his brother, and others false papers as non-Jews so they could safely return home from front-line military services when Greece was defeated; refusing offers from non-Jews to hide in order to remain with his pregnant wife; encounters with Nazi officials Dieter Wisliceny and Alois Brunner; playing the violin in the camp hospital on Sundays; his surgery in the hospital; avoiding selection with assistance from a hospital worker; assignment as an engineer to the Union factory; punishment for visiting his sister; arranging his younger sister's transfer to the Union factory; smuggling knives to the camp resistance; a death march and train transport to Mauthausen in January 1945; transfer to Gusen; liberation by United States troops in May; hospitalization; traveling to Paris; living in Villemomble, then Nice; reunion with his younger sister in Paris; learning their brother and sister had not survived; and emigration to Israel to join his son in the mid-1960s. Mr. S. discusses prisoners assisting each other in camps; attributing his will to survive to his desire to bear witness; and a book that documents his participation in the prisoner orchestra. He shows a document and plays the violin.

6 videocassettes