Georges P. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Georges P., who was born in Belgium in 1909, the third of three children in a religious Catholic family. He recalls attending school in Brussels; his family's exile to Le Havre in 1914; returning to Brussels after the war; studying humanities; entering Abbaye de Maredsous in 1926 to study for the priesthood; ordination in 1933; providing safe havens for Jewish refugees beginning in 1934; hiding Jews in the abbey in 1939; enlisting in the army during German invasion in 1940; traveling with his brother to Boulogne-sur-Mer; imprisonment by the Germans; escaping to Brussels; working as a nurse to wounded soldiers for the Belgian Red Cross; returning to the abbey; joining a resistance unit; tracking trains and hiding escaped prisoners of war and pilots; arrest a few months later; imprisonment in Namur, then St. Gilles; transfer to Lübeck; slave labor in a munitions factory; sabotaging the work with others; a trial in Berlin seven months later; a four-year sentence; imprisonment in Lehrterstrasse, then Tegel; solitary confinement from April 1942 to December 1943; transfer to a prison near Kraków, then in July 1944 to Dachau; starvation, lice, and pervasive deaths; placement with other clerics; slave labor; a Polish prisoner-doctor helping him when he was ill; arrival of Jews from Auschwitz; liberation by United States troops; repatriation; working with the British military until February 1946 to trace missing Belgians; returning to the abbey; and joining a committee to strengthen Jewish-Catholic ties. Father P. discusses his brother and sister joining resistance units (his brother did not survive); solidarity in the camps while striving to stay alive; being reduced to "nothingness"; and nightmares resulting from his experiences.

3 videocassettes