Ernest S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Ernest S., who was born in Gherla, Romania in 1925, the youngest of five children. He recounts his family moving to Cluj in 1932; one brother's emigration to Palestine; Hungarian occupation; working on the family dairy farm; German occupation in spring 1944; ghettoization; deportation with his parents and two siblings to Auschwitz; separation from his family upon arrival (he never saw them again); assignment to the Zigeunerlager (Gypsy Lager), then transfer to another barrack; learning of the gas chambers; transfer two weeks later to Hirschberg; slave labor in Phrix Werke and Askania Werke factories; a German soldier giving him extra food; clandestinely praying with other prisoners on Rosh ha-Shanah; a kapo pretending to beat him in order to protect him from a real beating; praying in gratitude; a severe beating resulting in a permanent disability; a death march; others helping him because he was barefoot; train transfer to Buchenwald; prisoners killing a brutal kapo from Hirschberg; hospitalization; liberation; assistance from the Red Cross; traveling to Italy, intending to join his brother in Palestine; learning another brother was in Gherla; and joining him there until emigrating in 1950. Mr. S. discusses relationships between national groups of camp prisoners and the prisoner hierarchy; and visiting his grandparents' graves in Romania in 1975 and Buchenwald in 1989. He shows documents and photographs.

4 videocassettes