Nathan G. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Nathan G., who was born in Paris, France in 1925, one of three children. He recalls a happy childhood; leaving school at thirteen to work with his father as a cobbler; German invasion; his father's arrest in 1941; seeing him in a window at Drancy; leaving his family for the unoccupied zone in 1942; living in Limoges, Toulouse, and Lyon; learning his mother and younger sister were deported (he never saw them again); arrest while returning to Paris in November; imprisonment in Autun and another location; kindness from a priest; transfer to Drancy in December; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in February 1943; slave labor; rapid deterioration; learning his father had been killed there; his improved condition after a privileged assignment to the laundry in April; helping friends; transfer to Warsaw in August 1943; clearing ghetto rubble; a beating by an SS guard; assistance from a friend; hospitalization for typhus; recovering with assistance from friends, including Serge L.; trading recovered valuables to Poles for food; a death march to Kutno, then train transport to Dachau in August 1944; transfer to Mühldorf, then Waldlager; as a French prisoner, receiving Red Cross packages; escape from a transport in May 1945; liberation by United States troops; living in Feldafing displaced persons camp; returning with friends to Paris; repatriation at the Hotel Lutetia; reunion with his older sister; recuperating in Aix-les-Bains; and continuing contact with camp friends, many of whom he names. Mr. G. discusses rage and humiliation at his initial arrest; disbelief upon first seeing piles of corpses; and the importance of luck and assistance from others to his survival.

3 videocassettes