Ernest K. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Ernest K., who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1919. He recounts his father had been born in the United States and retained his U.S. citizenship; speaking Esperanto at home; attending an Esperanto conference in Vienna with his younger brother and parents when he was five; speaking German, Hungarian, and Slovak; leaving gymnasium due to increased antisemitism; participating in Maccabi (wrestling and gymnastics); his father's efforts to obtain visas to the U.S.; arrest with his father and brother for defending themselves from an antisemitic mob; learning their U.S. visas were in Budapest; the prison director transferring them to the federal prison, then arranging their release; smuggling themselves to Budapest, with assistance from relatives, via Trnava, Nitra, and Nové Zámky; emigration to the U.S. from Genoa in February 1940, assistance from HIAS; military draft in 1941; serving as a translator in Germany; finding a cousin in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp; and working as a translator for the Department of Justice in order to remain in Europe to assist his cousin to emigrate to the United States.

1 videocassette