Alberto I. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Alberto I., who was born in Rhodes, Italy (presently Greece) in 1927, one of ten children. He recounts three brothers and a sister emigrating to Congo; the early deaths of two younger siblings; cordial relations with local Greeks; attending a Catholic school; participating in fascist activities; enactment of Italian anti-Jewish laws; expulsion from the Fascist party and school; attending a Jewish school; destruction of their house in an Allied bombing; German occupation in 1943; a deportation order for all Jews; the Turkish consul saving Jews with Turkish citizenship; deportation with his parents, sister, and two brothers in July 1944 to Haidari; encountering a cousin who had been born in the United States and was released; a thirteen-day journey in cattle trains to Auschwitz/Birkenau in August; many deaths en route; separation from his parents (he never saw them again); the odor of burning flesh; slave labor constructing roads; speaking with his sister through barbed wire fences; forming a quorum to say prayers; observing Yom Kippur; transfer with the other Rhodians two weeks later to Charlottengrube; slave labor in a coal mine; Polish civilian miners sharing their food; and one brother's transfer.

4 videocassettes