Isidore R. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Isidore R., who was born in Paris, France in approximately 1923. He recalls feeling French, not Jewish; German invasion; his father's arrest in August 1941; smuggling back and forth to the unoccupied zone; obtaining false papers; unsuccessfully trying to see friends who were rounded-up into the Vélodrome d'Hiver; being caught smuggling in Digoin in summer 1942; eight days imprisonment; transfer to Pithiviers, Beaune-la-Rolande, and Drancy; deportation to Auschwitz; a month quarantine; seeing his father; his suicide the next day (he never discussed this before); volunteering as a mason, an easier assignment; being showered in cold water, left outside naked, and beaten for hours on Christmas Eve 1942 (he still has nightmares about this); transfer to Zgoda (Świętochłowice); a beating for not making other prisoners work; sabotaging work in a munitions factory; transfer to Birkenau when he had typhus; assignment to Canada Kommando which saved his life; a prisoner revolt in the crematorium; transfer to another camp; a death march in January 1945; transport to Sachsenhausen, then Bergen-Belsen; moving corpses for days; liberation by British troops; and return to Paris (Hotel Lutetia). Mr. R. discuss group relations and his state of mind in the camps and the importance of teaching about the Holocaust.

3 videocassettes