Tuvia B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Tuvia B., who was born in Filakovo, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia), one of four children. He recounts his family's affluence; attending public school; an antisemitic neighbor; his bar mitzvah; attending high school for four years in Bratislava; joining a Zionist group; returning home; working in Haniska; Hungarian occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions; draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion; being allowed to return home six months later; recall; slave labor in a factory in Romania; transfer to the front lines near and in Poland; building roads; transfer of his group of thirty to German supervision; many deaths due to harsh conditions; asking a friend who was praying how he could believe in God under these circumstances; train transfer to Austria; Allied bombings resulting in prisoner deaths; helping a friend hide his wound; a brief escape; his group of eight Jews identifying themselves as non-Jewish Hungarians; denouncement by a Hungarian; an Austrian officer saving them from execution; being billeted in a former school in Graz; liberation by Soviet troops; identifying themselves as Jews in order not to be taken as Axis prisoners; traveling to Budapest; reunion with his parents and sister; returning to Filakovo; moving to Bratislava; assisting with illegal emigration to Palestine; emigration to Israel via Venice in 1949; and his parents joining him. Mr. B. discusses not wanting to share painful details, including conflicts among Jews; his lack of belief in God; and asking himself now how he survived such dire conditions. He shows photographs.

3 videocassettes