Max F. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3457) interviewed by Hessel Daalder and Elisabeth Inchusta,

Videotape testimony of Max F., who was born in Poland in 1924, the second of five children. He recounts his family's move to Charleroi in 1929; attending public school; membership in Zionist organizations; moving to Brussels in 1938; apprenticing as a barber; German invasion in May 1940; fleeing with his older brother to Calais; returning home after encountering German troops; forced labor with two brothers in La Louvière, then another location; their escape and return to Brussels; learning their parents and sister had been deported (they never saw them again); placing their youngest brother in hiding; living on false papers as non-Jews; joining his older brother in the Resistance in June 1943; killing collaborators and blowing up buildings; arrest in May 1944; confessing he was Jewish, hoping for more lenient treatment; deportation to Malines, then to Auschwitz/Birkenau the next day; slave labor outside; transfer to the laundry, a privileged position, through Resistance contacts; sharing extra food with others; a death march, then transfer in open train cars to Mauthausen in January 1945; Czechs throwing them food en route; transfer to Melk, then Ebensee; slave labor and starvation; liberation by United States troops in April; prisoners killing brutal guards; repatriation via Linz; reunion with his three brothers; nightmares about his parents and sister; and marriage to a non-Jew in 1950. Mr. F. discusses not knowing about the gas chambers, even in Auschwitz/Birkenau; seldom sharing his experiences, even with his wife and daughter; and attributing his survival to prisoner solidarity and his will to live.