John G. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of John. G., who was born in Miskolc, Hungary in 1930. He recounts his large extended family; their assimilated life style and strong Hungarian identity; his family's move to Debrecen shortly after his birth; his sister's birth in 1931; their move to Budapest in 1933; attending a Hungarian school; his father's 1940 draft as an officer to the military reserves; a last visit to relatives in Miskolc; anti-Jewish laws resulting in his father losing his job; attending a Catholic gymnasium despite the laws because his grandfather had been a student there; German occupation in March 1944; relocation to another apartment; having to wear the yellow star; brief round-up for slave labor moving furniture the Germans were confiscating; his father's draft for a slave labor battalion in October; forced relocation to another apartment; his father's return a few weeks later; obtaining false papers as Swiss citizens; round-up with his family to a brick factory; release due to their Swiss papers; his parents hiding him with a cousin who was posing as a Christian; his father and two uncles walking to Austria; his father's return (his uncles did not survive); liberation by Soviet troops in January 1945; reunion with his parents and sister who been living in the Budapest ghetto; returning to their original apartment; continuing at the same school; completing medical school; pervasive antisemitism; his parents' deaths in the early 1950s; his escape during the 1956 revolution; emigration to the United States with assistance from his father's friend in Cleveland; and his career in the United States military as a physician. Mr. G. notes almost none of his extended family survived. He shows his sister's yellow star, photographs, and a copy of his birth records that he obtained when visiting the Miskolc synagogue.

2 videocassettes