Erne E. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Erne E., who was born in Valea lui Mihai, Romania in 1928, the fourth of six children and only son. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; attending Jewish and public schools; his mother's death weeks before his bar mitzvah; participating in Mizrahi; Hungarian occupation in 1940; anti-Jewish restrictions including weekly forced labor; German invasion in April 1944; round-up to the synagogue; deportation with his family to the Oradea ghetto, then two weeks later to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation with his father from his sisters; his father telling him to volunteer as a carpenter (he never saw him again); transfer to Buchenwald days later; housing in a tent camp with others from his town; transfer a week later to Tröglitz; slave labor in a factory, then as a plumber and carpenter; Allied bombings; praying with others on Yom Kippur; transfer to Berga; the wife of a camp officer giving him extra food; volunteering to return to Buchenwald to be with a friend; hospitalization for three weeks; train transport in open boxcars; escaping during a bombing; recapture; a death march to Litoměřice, then Theresienstadt; Czechs giving them food en route; a severe beating; his friends caring for him; liberation by Soviet troops; hospitalization; traveling to Budapest; assistance from the Joint; returning home; recovering family belongings; reunion with two sisters; their departures; moving to the Rothschild Hospital displaced persons camp in Vienna; training as a mechanic in a Joint camp in Germany; emigration to Belgium in 1953; and marriage to a survivor in 1955. Mr. E. discusses not losing hope in the camps until the beating in Theresienstadt; never losing his belief in God; not sharing his experiences with his children; and nightmares that eventually ceased.

7 videocassettes