Reuven F. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Reuven F., who was born in Lille, France in 1925. He recounts his father's military service in World War I; difficulties communicating with his parents (they spoke only Yiddish and he mostly French); his father's draft into the military in 1930; their false sense of security due to their confidence in France and strong French identity; German invasion; anti-Jewish laws; humiliation at wearing the yellow star; the mayor's wife (who was Jewish) gluing pages of the lists of Jews together to prevent deportations; arrest and imprisonment in Cherbourg in November 1943; cruelty of the Todt Organisation administrators; transfer to Alderney concentration camp; most Jewish prisoners identifying themselves as French rather than Jewish; corresponding with his parents, who remained in Lille; a forced march and train transfer in late summer and fall 1944; an underground raid on the train in Belgium in September; their release and shelter by local villages; returning to Lille; reunion with his parents; their inability to comprehend his traumatic experiences; joining Gordonyah; illegal emigration to Palestine from Marseille in 1946; British incarceration at ?Atlit; joining a kibbutz; and his parents' subsequent emigration.

3 videocassettes