Issachar G. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Issachar G., who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1929, one of five children. He recounts his father was a rabbi; attending school for five years; his brother's marriage to a Swiss woman and their emigration to Switzerland; his older sister's emigration to Palestine; receiving emigration documents from her; his father's refusal to leave; Hlinka guards designating his family for deportation; receiving deportation exemptions from Rabbi Abraham-Aba Frieder; Frieder, Dov Weissmandel, and Gisi Fleischmann meeting in their home; his father arranging for Jews to be smuggled weekly to Hungary and hiding two rabbis; Weissmandel preventing the Hlinka guard from burning Jewish books through contacts in Switzerland; more dangerous conditions after the 1944 Slovak uprising; his brother's birth in September 1944; he and his father hiding during a round-up; returning to find his mother, sister, and brother gone (they were deported and killed); a woman exposing their hiding place; deportation to Sered, then Auschwitz with Gisi Fleischmann; his father's selection for death; transfer to Neiderorschel; slave labor in an airplane factory; a death march to Buchenwald; liberation by United States troops two days later; returning to Bratislava; leaving after finding no surviving relatives; living in an UNRAA camp for six weeks, then in Bad Nauheim and Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camps; illegal emigration to Palestine in 1946; interdiction; incarceration on Cyprus; entering Israel; and starting a new life and family. Mr. G. notes the difficulty of describing what he felt and experienced to those who were not there.

1 videocassette