Jacques A. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Jacques A., who was born in Germany in 1923. He recounts his mother's family's long history in Germany; their flight from Wuppertal to Nancy in 1933 due to antisemitism; moving to Romainville in 1936; arrest in 1941 for beating a Nazi sympathizer; escaping to Nantes; obtaining false papers; learning of his family's arrest in October 1942; his arrest in Nantes in 1943 as a Resistant; Gestapo interrogations; transfer to Drancy; deportation to Auschwitz; slave labor in "Lagischa Gruben" (Lagisza Cmentarna); transfer to Birkenau in July 1944; contracting typhus; friends placing him in the Zigeunerlager (Gypsy Lager) so he could recover; assignment to Canada Kommando; his sense of impotence upon seeing his grandparents arrive from Theresienstadt (they did not see him); transfer to Sachsenhausen; slave labor in Ohrdruf; a death march to Crawinkel, back to Ohrdruf, then Buchenwald in March 1945; hiding with a friend to avoid evacuation; promising to raise his friend's child if he did not survive; accidental shooting of his friend during liberation by United States troops; traveling to Paris with French soldiers; hospitalization; rehabilitation in centers in France and Switzerland; and adopting his friend's son. Mr. A. discusses thoughts of revenge and never having told anyone he saw his grandparents in Birkenau.

5 videocassettes