Ivan M. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Ivan M. who was born in 1912 in Bratislava, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (presently Slovakia). He recounts his family's assimilated lifestyle; his father's career as a physician; becoming a physician in 1936; working as a physician in Podbrezová, then in the health department in Trnava and Levoča; meeting his future wife, a non-Jew, in 1938; moving to Bratislava; conversion to Catholicism in 1942, hoping to avoid deportation; his wife hiding him, and later his parents; marriage in April 1944; his son's birth a week later; and rejoining the health department after the war. Dr. M. recounts his parents' experiences. He discusses his gratitude to many non-Jews who saved him and his family (only one uncle was killed); recognition of his wife by Yad Vashem; his commitment to Marxism; becoming disillusioned with communism; expulsion from the party in 1968; his children's sense of their religious identities, particularly in the antisemitic postwar period; and viewing himself as a Jew despite his conversion. He shows photographs and documents.

1 videocassette