Simon B. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2091) interviewed by Annette Wieviorka and Claudine Drame

Videotape testimony of Simon B., who was born in Poland in 1923. He recounts his family's emigration to Paris in 1924; living in Les Lilas, then Villers-Bretonneux; German invasion in 1940; returning to Paris; escaping to Toulouse in the unoccupied zone in 1942; obtaining false papers; a failed escape to Switzerland; traveling to Lyon; living in Grenoble with a friend; joining the resistance; arrest in November 1943; incarceration in Compiègne; deportation as a non-Jew to Buchenwald in January 1944; slave labor in a munitions factory; posing as a technician to remain with his friend; their transfer to Dora in March; slave labor on V2 rockets; living in underground tunnels; beatings and public hangings; improved conditions when they were moved to barracks; a death march to Ravensbruc̈k; continuing the march days later; escaping with six others, including his friend; liberation by Soviet troops; repatriation via Hotel Lutetia; reunion with his family; and resuming his true identity. Mr. B. discusses the importance to survival of helping each other maintain morale; relations between national groups of prisoners; chronic fatigue resulting from his experiences; and his parents and siblings surviving in France.