Walter S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Walter S., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1919, one of three brothers. He recounts attending a public school; participating in a social democratic youth movement, then a Zionist youth group; working as a locksmith; Anschluss; illegally entering Belgium; hiding with friends; moving to a refugee camp in Mechelen to obtain legal papers; training as an agricultural worker; corresponding with his parents; receiving papers; working in Bekkevoort and elsewhere; German invasion; arrest; incarceration in Malines; deportation to Auschwitz; slave labor as a gravedigger; transfer to Birkenau, then Golleschau; slave labor in a cement factory; his friend's suicide; public hangings of escapees; transfer by train to Sachsenhausen about two years later; working in a Heinkel airplane factory; sabotaging production; Allied bombings; transfer to a munitions factory, then back to Sachsenhausen; a death march; abandonment by the guards in Schwerin; liberation by Soviet troops; returning to Belgium; and emigration to Brazil in 1946, then Israel in 1968. Mr. S. discusses the deportations of his brothers, parents and many other relatives who never returned; keeping a diary of his experiences; not looking at it or discussing his experiences, wanting to erase painful memories; and nightmares if he views films or programs about the Holocaust.

3 videocassettes