Paul H. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1664)

Videotape testimony of Paul H., who was born in Chomutov, Czechoslovakia in 1914. He describes his family's completely assimilated life; medical studies in Prague; participation in socialist and anti-Nazi groups; German occupation in 1938; brief arrest due to his political activities; rearrest at the outbreak of war; deportation to Dachau as a Czech political prisoner; sensing he would not survive slave labor; pretending to be ill in order to remain in the hospital; transfer to Buchenwald; transfer to several prisons, then to Auschwitz in 1943; volunteering to work as a doctor; transfer to Jaworzno; using his position to save others; a death march, with very high mortality, to Gross-Rosen, then Buchenwald; working in the hospital; abandonment by the guards; and liberation by United States troops. Dr. H. recounts being interviewed and helped by Edward R. Murrow; hospitalizations in Jena and Bayreuth; traveling to Paris and England; and emigrating to the United States in April 1946. He discusses his state of mind in the camps; atrocities committed by Ilse Koch; surviving due to luck and his work as a physician, which provided extra food and shelter; illnesses resulting from his experiences; and keeping a diary during the war years.