F. M. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of M. F., who was born in Dunajská Streda, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1921 and raised in Bratislava. He recalls his family's assimilated, middle-class lifestyle; cordial relations between ethnic and religious groups; attending school in Brno; anti-Jewish laws in March 1939 after Slovak independence; confiscation of his parent's home; their move to Nitra; his arrest on July 5, 1940; harsh interrogations and beatings for four months, transfer from Bratislava to Leopoldov; release in Galanta; returning to Bratislava; re-arrest and a thirty-day imprisonment; draft into the Sixth Battalion, a Jewish forced labor brigade, in September 1941; postings in Sabinov and Humenné; visiting his parents in Nitra; hospitalization for jaundice; three months recuperation with his parents; rejoining the battalion; a group assembling false documents leading to the escape of 150; visiting his parents in April 1942 before their deportation (he never saw them again); Hlinka Guard taking command of the battalion in July 1943; assignments in several locations ending in Kostolná; the Slovak national uprising; staying with a woman and her family using his false papers as a non-Jew until liberation in April 1945; marriage to his rescuer; and the births of two children. Mr. F. notes constant fear and uncertainty during the war and the survival of many Jewish men due to their draft into the Sixth Battalion rather than being deported.

1 videocassette