Avraham B. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Avraham B., who was born in a small town in Czechoslovakia, one of seven children. He recounts his family's farm; attending public school and cheder, locally, then in Irshava; bar mitzvah; attending yeshiva in Uz︠h︡horod; learning tailoring in Bergovo (Berehove); Hungarian occupation; moving to Budapest in 1938; joining the Communist Party; arrest; being sent home; returning to Budapest; his sister joining him; anti-Jewish restrictions; a non-Jew helping him escape from a labor detail; returning home, then back to Budapest three weeks later; draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion in October 1942; forced labor near Komárom, then Transylvania; digging an underground fuel dump; visiting his parents in December 1943; transfer to German custody in Bucsu; digging bunkers; assignment to the detail obtaining food for the camp in Szombathely; a death march to Mauthausen, then Gunskirchen; abandonment by German guards; liberation by United States troops; traveling in a group to Wels displaced persons camp; hospitalization for typhus; traveling to Prague; locating relatives with assistance from UNRRA; reunion with a sister in Budapest; traveling to Berehove; reunion with another sister and a brother; traveling to Budapest; his sister and brother returning to Czechoslovakia (they were trapped there when the border closed); and preparing for emigration to Palestine. Mr. B. notes learning his parents were deported to Auschwitz, and that his father had been in Dachau as well (they did not survive).
Extent and Medium
2 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony is open with permission.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- B., Avraham.
Corporate Bodies
- Mauthausen (Concentration camp)
- United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
- Gunskirchen (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Postwar experiences.
- Death marches.
- Refugee camps.
- Hungarian occupation.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Bar mitzvah.
- Forced labor.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Conscript labor -- Hungary.
- Escapes.
- Video tapes.
- Men.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust survivors.
Places
- Wels (Austria : Refugee camp)
- Bucsu (Hungary)
- Transylvania (Romania)
- Prague (Czech Republic)
- Szombathely (Hungary)
- Berehove (Ukraine)
- Uz︠h︡horod (Ukraine)
- Komárom (Hungary)
- Budapest (Hungary)
- Czechoslovakia.
- Irshava (Ukraine)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat