Joseph H. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Joseph H., who was born in Boryslav, Poland (presently Ukraine) in 1921, the youngest of three children. He recounts his brother's death before his own birth; his family's orthodoxy; attending cheder; participating in Zionist groups; brief German invasion; Soviet occupation; German invasion in 1941; hiding his family during Ukrainian anti-Jewish violence and killings; ghettoization; hiding his parents during round-ups (he and his sister had jobs which exempted them from deportation); his later deportation to Janowska; escape with assistance from the camp underground; returning to Boryslav; futile efforts to save his mother from deportation; witnessing a mass killing; hiding in a bunker with his father and sister; his sister's deportation to Płaszów; deportation with his father to Płaszów; their transfer to Wieliczka; his sister's deportation to Stutthof (she was killed there); deportation with his father to Birkenau in August 1944; remaining in sealed train cars for days; transfer to Mauthausen; slave labor in the quarry; his father's transfer to Melk (he did not survive); transfer to Linz II, then the Hermann-Göring-Werke; public executions; civilian workers bringing him food; Allied bombings; injuries from shrapnel; liberation by United States troops; jealousy of the liberated Soviet prisoners who exacted revenge on the Germans; traveling to Budapest; assisting refugees illegally traveling from Salzburg to Italy; organizing refugee camps in Belgium; meeting his future wife; illegal emigration from Marseille by ship to Palestine; interdiction by the British; incarceration on Cyprus for twenty-one months; marriage; and arrival in Israel. Mr. H. discusses relations between national prisoner groups in the camps; refusing to testify at war crimes trials, despite an investigator traveling to Israel to solicit his testimony, due to his belief it would not serve justice; and continuing health problems resulting from his experiences.

4 videocassettes