Felix N. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Felix N., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1926, one of three children. He recounts attending public school and cheder; antisemitic harassment; attending summer camp in Piotrków Trybunalski; his bar mitzvah; working in his father's tailor business; German invasion in September 1939; ghettoization; hiding during round-ups; public executions; working in a factory; deportation with his family to Auschwitz/Birkenau in summer 1944; separation from his sister and mother (he never saw them again); meaningless slave labor; transfer to Gross-Rosen three weeks later; slave labor constructing railroad tracks; assistance from a German soldier; his father's death en route to Mauthausen; slave labor building an underground factory; transfer to Ebenesee; his brother's killing; a Russian prisoner giving him cooked meat and informing him afterward that it was human flesh; abandonment by the guards; liberation by United States troops; hospitalization; traveling with a friend to Brno; assistance from the Red Cross; living with a Jewish couple in Prague; working as a tailor; joining a group for illegal emigration to Palestine in 1946; assistance from UNRRA; meeting relatives in Paris during the group's journey, then an uncle and aunt in Belgium; deciding to remain there; working as a tailor; marriage in 1951; and the births of two daughters. Mr. N. discusses many details of camp and ghetto life; numbing himself to deaths and atrocities; continuing despair and nightmares after liberation; his loss of faith in God, though maintaining his Jewish identity; attributing his survival to luck and help from others; not sharing his experiences with his wife or daughters; speaking at schools; and visits to Auschwitz. He shows photographs, documents, and his Mauthausen identification bracelet.

9 videocassettes