Viliam G. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Viliam G., who was born in Hlohovec, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1923. He recalls his father was principal and taught in an orthodox school; increasingly severe restrictions on Jews under the Hlinka guard; his sister's deportation; his father's influence obtaining his (Viliam's) position sorting the confiscated property of deported Jews, thus exempting him from deportation until 1944; a non-Jewish woman hiding him after the arrival of German troops; arrest; interrogation by the Gestapo in Trenčin, then incarceration in Sered; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in November 1944; hospitalization; meeting his father in the hospital; he and his father helping other prisoners; liberation by Soviet troops; repatriation with his parents and sister; a long recuperation in Poprad, then Kvetnica; meeting his future wife; and returning to Hlohovec. Mr. G. notes feigning work in camps on Saturday in order to observe the Sabbath; the importance of luck to his survival (e.g. arriving at Auschwitz/Birkenau after the gas chambers no longer were in operation); his father becoming a rabbi after the war; the murder of his wife's entire family and almost all of his extended family in the Holocaust; and continuing terrifying nightmares.

1 videocassette