Siegbert K. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Siegbert K., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1921 to Polish emigres. He recounts his family's return to Poland and immediate emigration to Brussels; speaking Yiddish, Polish, and Russian at home; the births of two sisters; his father establishing a business; his bar mitzvah; German invasion in 1940; efforts to enlist and rejection as a non-Belgian citizen; obtaining papers as non-Jews for himself and his sisters; joining the Front de l'Indépendence Resistance; hiding his youngest sister with non-Jews; his parents refusing false papers; their deportation in 1942 (they did not survive); forging currency and false papers for the Resistance; escaping arrest twice; being warned by friends to leave; obtaining a new identification; traveling to Lyon, then Annemasse; joining the French Resistance; arrest a year later in Aix-les Bains; incarceration in Compiègne; identification as a Jew; transfer to Drancy, then Auschwitz/Birkenau; a friend providing extra food; slave labor in Monowitz; a friend advising him to volunteer as a mechanic; working for I.G. Farben, then for Todt; a death march to Gleiwitz; train transfer to Buchenwald; non-Jewish friends sharing Red Cross packages; self-liberation in April 1945; arrival of United States troops; repatriation to Belgium six weeks later; depression; assistance from the Joint; reunion with his sisters; not sharing his experiences with them, marriage to a Malines survivor in 1948; and raising their children as Jews. Mr. K. discusses continuing medical problems resulting from his experiences; receiving less Belgian compensation as a Jewish deportee than non-Jewish deportees; hostility toward Germans and Poles; and believing that humankind has not learned anything from history.

3 videocassettes