De?sire? H. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of De?sire? H. He recounts studying medicine in Tours, France due to restrictions against Jews in Romania; vacationing in Romania when the war began; returning to Tours; continuing medical school; joining the Front national; demonstrating and minor Resistance activities; arrest on July 15, 1942; deportation from Angers to Auschwitz; brief slave labor; volunteering as a physician; a privileged assignment to an administrative block from August 1942 until October 26, 1944; liquidation of the Zigeunerlager (Gypsy Lager); a prisoner uprising which destroyed one crematorium; individual and group acts of resistance by women; transfer to Oranienburg, Sachsenhausen, and Ohrdruf; slave labor digging tunnels; reassignment as a doctor; escape and recapture; liberation by United States troops; and choosing to be repatriated to France. Dr. H. discusses the role of physicians in the extermination process and sadistic "medical experiments" on prisoners; concentration camp organization and daily life; the moral implication of enormous numbers of people who participated in killing others in the twentieth century; and images that still haunt him. He notes his thesis concerned his camp experiences and reluctance to share these experiences with his children who are not interested, but discussing them with his granddaughter and daughter-in-law.

2 videocassettes