Bernard K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3658) interviewed by Peter Salner and Ingrid Králová,

Videotape testimony of Bernard K., who was born in Iňačovce, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1919, the youngest of three children. He recalls his family's extreme poverty; cordial relations with non-Jews; his father's death in 1929; attending school in Michalovce; antisemitism from Hlinka guard members beginning in the late 1930s; membership in Hashomer Hatzair; draft into the Sixth Battalion, a Jewish forced labor brigade, in 1941; being sent to Čemerné, then to Prešov for twenty months; learning two sisters had been deported and neighbors were hiding his mother; visiting home; finding his mother had been deported; helplessness and depression pervading his unit as they learned of family deportations; assignments in Kuchyňa, then Liptovský Svätý Peter; working as a surveyor's assistant; assistance from the local population; transfer to Bratislava; dissolution of the Sixth Battalion; producing false papers for himself and others (he permanently changed his name to that of a childhood friend); working with a civilian division until the Slovak uprising; liberation by Soviet troops; working as an interpreter for them in Pukanec; meeting his future wife, a non-Jew; completing university; marriage; the birth of two daughters; and difficulties obtaining employment due to his former Hashomer Hatzair membership. Mr. K. notes he is the sole survivor of his extended family of over ninety; attending Sixth Battalion reunions in Slovakia and Israel; and his belief in helping others and a better future with religious and ethnic tolerance. He shows photographs.