Erich S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Erich S., who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1929, the youngest of three children. He recounts his family observing Judaism, although not orthodoxy; moving to Nové Mesto nad Váhom in 1935; attending a Jewish school; their return to Bratislava in 1936; attending a Jewish school; participating in Maccabi ha-Ẓair; hearing Hitler's speech from Vienna after the Anschluss in 1938; increasing antisemitism; his father declining an offer to move to Bolivia; his sister's sham marriage to avoid deportation; his brother's draft for forced labor; his father's death from tuberculosis in 1942; hiding in an attic with his mother for a year; his bar mitzvah; he and his mother obtaining papers as non-Jews through his uncle, who was later killed as a partisan, though his wife and two children survived; he and his mother renting rooms in different areas; avoiding their former residential area; meeting his mother twice weekly at the movies; working as an errand boy; briefly working with his brother in Piešt̕any, both posing as non-Jews; returning to Bratislava; his mother receiving warnings of Hlinka guard raids; hiding in her attic with his sister, relatives, and friends - seven in total; one uncle and wife leaving due to the stress (they never saw them again); liberation by Soviet troops; learning his brother had been killed in the Slovak Uprising; transporting his body for burial in a Jewish cemetery; completing high school, then military service; and his military career in cultural affairs. Mr. S. documents many relatives who were killed and expresses gratitude to a non-Jew who had helped them and others for altruistic reasons.

1 videocassette