David M. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of David M., who was born in Simleul-Silvaniei, Romania in 1928, the ninth of twelve children. He recounts his family's relative affluence; attending cheder and public school; Hungarian occupation in 1941; anti-Jewish restrictions; working for a non-Jewish furniture maker to learn the trade; his older brothers' draft into Hungarian slave labor battalions; German invasion in 1944; a round-up; giving his father's watch to a family friend; incarceration in a brick factory; deportation to Auschwitz; privileged work in a kitchen; contact with his sisters; throwing them food and shoes; a kapo protecting him from selections; hiding with a friend from a selection; volunteering for transfer; slave labor in Leipzig; a death march to Allach in May; liberation by United States troops; prisoners killing the guards; living in Munich, then Feldafing displaced persons camp; traveling with the Jewish Brigade to Italy; assistance from the Red Cross; living in various locations including Bolzano, Modena, Ancona, and Santa Cesarea; assistance from UNRRA; learning two sisters and two brothers had survived; waiting in Rome, then Ostia (on a Mizrachi kibbutz) to return home to join them; his sister writing him not to come; illegal emigration to Palestine; incarceration on Cyprus for almost two years; serving in the Israeli military; and emigration to the United States in 1954. Mr. M. discusses inter-group relations in concentration camps; the importance of friends to his survival; visiting his hometown with his daughter; and gratitude to the United States. He shows photographs and his father's watch (a sibling is pictured for each hour).

2 videocassettes