Peter P. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3079)

Videotape testimony of Peter P., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1927. He recalls his parents' divorce; childhood poverty; the Anschluss; anti-Jewish violence; leaving for Czechoslovakia in summer 1938; his mother's successful application as an au pair in England; traveling with her and his sister to Brussels; staying there with his grandmother; obtaining tickets to join their mother on May 17, 1940; German invasion on May 10 ending their plan; their grandmother's death; living as street children, stealing food; his arrest in 1943 (his sister subsequently was hidden in a convent); deportation to Malines, then Auschwitz; volunteering to leave believing he would not survive there; clearing rubble in the Warsaw ghetto; trading valuables he found for food with Polish civilians; a death march; train transport to Dachau; slave labor in Bavaria and Muehlheim; train evacuation to Starnberger See; liberation by United States troops; reunion with his sister in Brussels; joining their mother in Glasgow; and emigration to Canada in 1959. Mr. P. details camp life including complete dehumanization; good and bad prisoners and guards; postwar physical and mental problems; and the importance to his survival of luck, previous hardships, and believing his family was safe.