Alexander B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Alexander B., who was born in Lučenec, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (presently Slovakia) in 1914, the youngest of three brothers. He recalls cordial relations with non-Jews; working as an accountant; annexation by Hungary in 1938; moving with his parents to Budapest in 1939; draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion in 1941; deportation to the Pestlőrinc ghetto, then Kőszeg; hard labor and harsh treatment; transfer to the Romanian border three months later to destroy bunkers, to another location to build roads, then back to Budapest to build river embankments in III. Kerület; hospitalization for three weeks; visits from his family; returning to his platoon; road building in Osijek; release in November 1941 due to his age; returning to Budapest; redraft for slave labor in November 1942; assignment to a textile factory in Budapest; living at home; German occupation in March 1944; transfer to a steel factory in Diósgyőr; Allied bombings; brief hospitalization in Miskolc; walking to Budapest in September, then toward Austria; German soldiers commanding them to construct dugouts; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to a Joint facility in Szeged, then back to Budapest; visiting his surviving brother; returning to Lučenec in 1947; moving to Bratislava; marriage in 1949, and working as an accountant for the Jewish community. Mr. B. notes while he was in forced labor receiving a letter from a Christian neighbor informing him his parents had been deported to Auschwitz (he never heard from them again) and one brother's death in a concentration camp.

1 videocassette