Meir S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Meir S., who was born in Na?sa?ud, Romania in 1925 to a family with fourteen children. He describes his father, a biblical scribe; his very religious upbringing; moving to a small village in Hungary as a young child; German occupation, ghettoization, and transfer of all Jews to another town; his father's humiliation at having to shave his beard; and transport to Auschwitz. Mr. S. recalls the treatment of the prisoners as numbers, not humans; not knowing what happened to his family and not being able to comprehend that he was in a death camp; volunteering as a mechanic and transport to Longwy-Thil; work in an underground factory manufacturing airplane parts; transfer to another camp in Germany; work in an underground salt mine where his physical condition deteriorated quickly; trading numbers with a man and leaving camp in his place for Dachau; transfer to Allach, a subcamp of Dachau; seeing one of his brothers days before he died; and liberation in early 1945. He recalls helping to organize illegal emigration to Palestine in Italy; reunion with his youngest brother Nechemia; their emigration to Palestine; Nechemia's death in the Israeli War for Independence; and Mr. S.'s marriage to a survivor whom he met in Israel. Mr. S. discusses the importance of religious observance and the impact of the losses on himself and the Jewish people as a whole.

2 videocassettes (3/4" u-matic)