Hellmut S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Hellmut S., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1928. He recalls his parents' careers as musicians; losing their jobs due to anti-Jewish laws; piano and violin lessons; excitement at Nazi parades; singing in a Jüdischer Kulturbund youth choir; attending a Jewish school; his father arranging emigration to Palestine for his two daughters from a previous marriage; obtaining visas for Manchuria; witnessing mass destruction and synagogue burnings following Kristallnacht; departing on November 21, 1938; the long ship journey from Naples to Shanghai; traveling to Harbin; benign treatment by the Japanese; studying violin; Soviet invasion in 1945; not being able to leave due to the civil war; working as a musician in Mongolia; returning to Harbin; traveling to Tianjin in 1949, then to Israel, with assistance from the United Nations; playing violin with Isaac Stern and in an orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein; his parents' emigration to the United States in 1956; not being able to leave due to the Sinai War; joining them in 1957; returning to Berlin in August 1961; playing in a philharmonic orchestra; marriage to a non-Jew in 1963 (she converted); the births of two children; and bringing his parents to join him in Germany. Mr. S. discusses feeling at home in Germany; he and his parents not receiving reparations; belonging to the Jewish community; and his book.

5 videocassettes