Cesare F. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Cesare F., who was born in Naples, Italy to a Jewish, Hungarian mother and Catholic, Italian father. He recounts moving to Budapest with his mother in 1938 to protect his father's career as a musical composer; his mother working as a seamstress since Jews could not be in the ballet (she was a ballerina); being raised as a Catholic; attending mass every Sunday; German invasion in March 1944; orders to move to a yellow-star house; his mother trying to get him to Italy via Switzerland; the man his father paid to take him to Switzerland bringing him instead to a Catholic orphanage in Visegrád; humane treatment despite limited food; liberation by Soviet troops; returning to Budapest; living at the Red Cross; placement with a family in Apagy; reunion with his mother eighteen months later (she had been in Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen); their return to Budapest; persecution by the communists because he would not take Hungarian citizenship; reunion with his father in Italy in 1956 (he had remarried thinking they were dead); happily caring for his mother the rest of her life; and emigration to the United States. Mr. F. notes learning of his mother's war experiences from documents and friends since she never discussed them.

1 videocassette