Avri F. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Avri F., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1935, an only child. He recounts his family's move back to Bratislava when he was two weeks old; his father being a respected and beloved pediatrician; observing marches of Hlinka guards; attending school until anti-Jewish laws forbade it; having to move several times; studying with five other boys in private classes; his uncle being beaten to death and his wife committing suicide; frequent visits with his aunt, Gisi Fleischmann; his parents deciding he would not wear the yellow star; walking separately from them in public with instructions to calmly go to his Christian aunt if they were arrested; his parents leaving possessions with non-Jewish friends; being warned by his Christian aunt to hide in August 1944; his parents hiding in their neighbors' garden shed but having him hidden elsewhere; contact with his parents through his Christian aunt; being moved after Germans came to the house where he was hidden; living with a family whose head was a German soldier; hiding under a bed when they had guests, despite having false papers and living as a Catholic; the family moving to a village as the front approached; liberation by Soviet troops; a joyful reunion when his parents came for him; learning Gisi Fleischmann has been deported and killed; returning to school; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; emigrating to Israel in 1949 against his parents' wishes; living on a kibbutz; working for Hashomer Hatzair; traveling to Czechoslovakia in 1988, the first time since he had left forty years ago; and visiting his aunt and the graves of his parents and grandparents.

1 videocassette