Bernard K. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Bernard K., who was born in Iňačovce, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1919, the youngest of three children. He recalls his family's extreme poverty; cordial relations with non-Jews; his father's death in 1929; attending school in Michalovce; antisemitism from Hlinka guard members beginning in the late 1930s; membership in Hashomer Hatzair; draft into the Sixth Battalion, a Jewish forced labor brigade, in 1941; being sent to Čemerné, then to Prešov for twenty months; learning two sisters had been deported and neighbors were hiding his mother; visiting home; finding his mother had been deported; helplessness and depression pervading his unit as they learned of family deportations; assignments in Kuchyňa, then Liptovský Svätý Peter; working as a surveyor's assistant; assistance from the local population; transfer to Bratislava; dissolution of the Sixth Battalion; producing false papers for himself and others (he permanently changed his name to that of a childhood friend); working with a civilian division until the Slovak uprising; liberation by Soviet troops; working as an interpreter for them in Pukanec; meeting his future wife, a non-Jew; completing university; marriage; the birth of two daughters; and difficulties obtaining employment due to his former Hashomer Hatzair membership. Mr. K. notes he is the sole survivor of his extended family of over ninety; attending Sixth Battalion reunions in Slovakia and Israel; and his belief in helping others and a better future with religious and ethnic tolerance. He shows photographs.

4 videocassettes