Peter B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Peter B., who was born in Cologne, Germany in 1920. He recalls his father's socialist activities; his mother's death in 1935; his family fleeing to Antwerp; his father's death while a physician in the Spanish Civil War; his brother's service in Spain; working in Brussels, then France; incarceration after war began in 1939; release; joining the Resistance; obtaining false papers; organizing a children's home near Montpellier with assistance from Cardinal Pierre Gerlier; imprisonments and escapes; arrest at the children's home; incarceration in Vénissieux, then Drancy in December 1943; transport to Trzebinia, Auschwitz/Birkenau, then Warsaw; slave labor in the former ghetto; using his false name (he was marked as a "political," not a Jew); a death march to Łódź; transport to Dachau, then a labor camp; receiving extra food from locals; with other inmates shaving a second stripe on their heads as an act of resistance near war's end; liberation by United States troops; traveling to Lyon; recuperating in Paris; reunion with his brother; returning to Cologne; and futile efforts to get family property returned. Mr. B. discusses the importance of prisoner solidarity to his survival; his sense of paralysis in the camps; not sharing much of his story with his sons; and his lost youth. He shows photographs.

3 videocassettes