Yoseph M. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Yoseph M., who was born in Sremska Mitrovica, Yugoslavia (presently Serbia) in 1922, one of six children. He recounts his father's mobilization two days before German invasion in April 1941; Ustaša severely beating him and his brother; German soldiers billeting in their house; a German protecting them from Ustaša; his father's arrest; futile attempts to secure his release; arrest with his brother by Ustaša; their transfer to a prison in Zagreb, then to Jadovno and Gospić; slave labor harvesting wheat; transfer to Jasenovac; slave labor felling trees; Ustaša brutally torturing and killing prisoners (Serbs, Jews, Romanies); his brother's assignment to an Ustaša bakery; sharing extra food he obtained; Jewish prisoner-officials intervening to prevent more killing and torture; slave labor as a mechanic; transfer to Feričanci, then back to Jasenovac; he and his brother volunteering for work in Stara Gradiška; transfer back to Jasenovac; prisoners killing a very cruel Jewish official; observing cannibalism; being sent to retrieve equipment from Jadovno after its liquidation; seeing his father's corpse there; Ustaša burning twenty prisoners alive, including his brother; exhuming and burning corpses; escaping with others; a fellow escapee preventing him from hanging himself; assistance from local villagers; joining the partisans, then the Yugoslav military; fighting to Trieste; identifying captured Ustaša and Jasenovac guards; killing SS men; demobilization; returning to Sremska Mitrovica; reunion with an uncle; moving to Novi Sad; and emigration with his wife to Israel in 1948. Mr. M. notes learning his family was deported and killed in Auschwitz; details of many atrocities; and visiting the Jasenovac museum where the history was distorted.

3 videocassettes