George G. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1398) interviewed by Alan Lucas and Alice Epstein

Videotape testimony of George G., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1922. He describes being the oldest child of three in a traditional family; the family move to Poznań; anti-Semitic incidents in public school and law school (he attended for only three months due to the outbreak of the war); returning to Łódź in September 1939; ghettoization in 1940; forced labor managing a clothing factory; Ḥayim Rumkowski's role; starvation and epidemics; round-ups, first of the sick, then of entire areas; buying black market food to enable his family's survival; and mass deportations in 1943. Mr. G. recalls liquidation of the ghetto in 1944; deportation to Auschwitz with his family; selection of his mother and brother and soon learning their fate; stealing potato peels from the garbage for himself and his father; the death march to Kaltwasser; liberation; returning to Łódź to seek surviving family; learning that of his family of 140 members, only he and his father survived; and meeting his future wife. Mr. G. tells of returning to Germany; his marriage in 1946 in a displaced persons camp; emigration to the United States in 1949; his reluctance to discuss the Holocaust with his children; and a 1986 trip to Auschwitz to recite "kaddish."