Itzchak S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Itzchak S., who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia), in 1921, one of five children. He recounts attending Jewish and public schools; participating in Hashomer Hatzair, then Betar; increasing antisemitism in the late 1930s; working as an accountant; anti-Jewish legislation; his family's eviction; one brother's deportation to a labor camp; draft into a Jewish forced labor brigade (Sixth Battalion) in 1941; visits home and to his brother, who was incarcerated in Sered; postings to Svätý Jur, Trenčín, and Dubnitsa; twenty-one days in prison when he was caught visiting home; disbandment of the battalion in 1943; deportation with his family to Auschwitz/Birkenau; selection of his mother and sister for death; a Polish prisoner saving his father from selection; sharing food with each other; transfer to Jaworzno, then Gleiwitz; walking to Blechhammer in January 1944; hiding with the goal of remaining behind when the march left; walking to Bratislava, always toward Soviet lines, staying a few weeks in Częstochowa and Kraków; separating at times from his father and brothers, but meeting again in March 1945; one brother recuperating in a sanatorium; and their emigration to Israel. Ms. S. attributes their survival to his father and three brothers remaining together.

3 videocassettes