Salomon R. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Salomon R., who was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1925, one of three children of Polish émigrés. He recounts his father's death in 1933; attending public school and weekly Yiddish lessons; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; increasing antisemitism by right-wing extremists; housing German-Jewish refugees; German invasion in May 1940; registering as Jews when required to do so; recruitment by his brother-in-law to the Resistance at age fifteen; obtaining false papers; assignments delivering underground newspapers and smuggling people to northern France via Kortrijk (Coutrai); arrest and imprisonment as a Resistant in Coutrai in December 1941; encountering his older sister and mother after their arrests (his younger sister, Freida R., had escaped to France); their release; transfer to Bruges four months later; solitary confinement for seven months; transfer to St. Gilles; encountering his mother, sister, and others from his network; their deportation to Essen; separation from his mother and sister the next day when transfered to Bochum; slave labor in a munitions factory; transfer to Esterwegen in spring 1943; solidarity among the French and Belgian prisoners; Flemish prisoners praying nightly; organizing evening lectures; hospitalization; a Belgian prisoner-doctor saving his life; transfer to Auschwitz/Birkenau a year later via several prisons, including Hamm; assignment to Monowitz; encountering a cousin from Antwerp, who had a privileged position and helped him; hospitalization by a German prisoner-nurse which saved his life; a privileged position in the garden due to his status as a long-time prisoner; and sharing food with others.

6 videocassettes