Rudi F. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Rudi F., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1922, one of nine children. He recounts his family's move to Vișeu de Sus when he was about five; attending cheder, Romanian public school, then yeshiva; apprenticeships as a mechanic and barber; living with a sister in Arad; working at her husband's barber shop; antisemitic harassment; participating in Gordonyah; Hungarian occupation; returning to Vișeu de Sus; moving to Budapest; studying singing; a brother and sister joining him; draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion in 1943; slave labor in Kőszeg and Uzhok; frequent beatings and deaths; German invasion in 1944; transfer to Sobrance then to Uz︠h︡horod for deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; assignment to the Zigeunerlager (Gypsy Lager); frequent beatings; receiving extra food for singing; volunteering as a mechanic; transfer to a munitions factory in Longwy; a public hanging; transfer to Kochendorf; working as a barber and cleaning officer quarters; sharing food he found with fellow prisoners; transfer to another camp; Allied bombings; transport back to Kochendorf; volunteering to beat a prisoner who stole bread, sparing him from harsher punishment; transfer to Dachau; prisoners beating a kapo from Kochendorf; train transfer; receiving a Red Cross package; a death march; escaping with a friend; liberation by United States troops; recuperating in Mittenwald; traveling to Munich; reunion with a brother; living in Feldafing displaced persons camp; helping organize a Yiddish theater; joining his sister in Arad; moving to Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp; learning another sister was in Sweden; participating in theater and sports; meeting his future wife; her emigration to Israel; living in Paris for eighteen months; emigration to Israel; marriage; serving in the Israel-Arab War; births of a son and daughter; and training and working as a cantor. Mr. F. notes attributing his survival to maintaining hope and to luck; postwar nightmares and physical ailments; and not sharing his story with his children. He shows photographs and documents.

6 videocassettes