Henri B. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Henri B., who was born in Thessalonike?, Greece in 1919 to an impoverished family of four children. He recounts attending Greek public school; military service in Albania; attending university in Athens starting in 1940; benign Italian occupation; German invasion in September 1943; anti-Jewish regulations; obtaining false papers from a Greek police officer; hiding with friends; arrest; incarceration in Haidari; denunciation as a Jew; pointless slave labor; escaping from a deportation train in September 1944; discovering he was near Zolna? in Slovakia; assistance from local villagers; futile attempts to contact Slovak resistants; arrest; imprisonment in Bratislava; and contacts with French POWs. Mr. B. describes posing as an Italian during interrogations; expulsion to the Hungarian border; refusing to enter Hungary; working on a farm in C?ekli?s, posing as an Italian non-Jew; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to Bratislava; returning to Thessalonike?; learning his family was killed except his for younger brother in the leftist resistance; his brother's exile to Bulgaria by the rightist government; working as a chemist in Athens; marriage in 1953; deciding not to have children so they would not experience suffering due to antisemitism; and bringing his brother and family back to Greece in 1965.
Extent and Medium
2 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony is open with permission.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- B., Henri, -- 1919-
Corporate Bodies
- Haidari (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Men.
- Video tapes.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, Slovak.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Prisoners of war -- Slovakia.
- Italian occupation.
- False papers.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Forced labor.
- Escapes.
- Hiding.
- Postwar experiences.
Places
- Čeklís (Slovakia)
- Bratislava (Slovakia)
- Thessalonikē (Greece)
- Athens (Greece)
- Piraeus (Greece)
- Zolná (Slovakia)
- Greece.
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat