Félix G. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Félix G., who was born in Forest, Belgium to Polish immigrants in 1926, one of three sons. He recalls growing up in Brussels; his family's focus on education; doing well in school; German invasion; fleeing with his family to Abbeville; returning when overtaken by German troops; anti-Jewish restrictions including expulsion from school and wearing the star; arrest in September 1942; incarceration in Malines; love at first sight for another prisoner (Frieda); deportation to Sakrau; separation from Frieda (he never saw her again); transfer to Königshütte; slave labor building barracks, then in a factory; his friend's death; transfer to the hospital at Laurahütte when he was ill; assistance from a Jewish doctor who had known his older brother; return to Königshütte when he recovered, and a month later to Blechhammer; public hanging of a friend; a Belgian forced laborer recognizing him and bringing him a food package from a former teacher; a death march to Gross-Rosen; a futile escape attempt; permanent injuries resulting from a beating when he was caught; transfer to Buchenwald; being placed on a pile of corpses; liberation by United States troops; recovering for a month; repatriation; his older brother's return from the camps and suicide; reunion with his younger brother who had been hidden as a non-Jew; learning his parents had been deported and killed; placement in tuberculosis sanitaria in Davos and Leysin for three years; and completing law school in 1953. Mr. G. discusses dehumanization and losing his ability to cry and to feel in camps; lack of solidarity among prisoners; strained relations between west and east European Jews; the failures of Belgium's Jewish leadership; his book about Frieda; not marrying due to never feeling as strongly about another woman; and concluding there is no answer to his quest to understand how humans could treat others with such sadism and cruelty.

10 videocassettes