- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Saul H., who was born in Thessalonikē, Greece in approximately 1925. He recalls German invasion in 1941; avoiding forced labor during a round-up in Independence Square; forced labor with his brother on the rail line to Athens; ghettoization in 1943; his family's deportation; escaping with his brother; hiding with a non-Jewish friend, then in the country; obtaining false papers; being caught; torture as partisans; incarceration in Haidari; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; his brother's escape en route; assignment to the Sonderkommando; burning bodies in outside pits, including some who were still alive; removing bodies from the gas chamber to crematorium II; friendship with a few Greeks; sadism of the Germans; planning a revolt; learning it had started in another unit; denying knowledge of the revolt during questioning by Kommandant Josef Kramer; assignment to blow up the gas chambers in November 1944; joining the death march unbeknownst to the guards; slave labor in Mauthausen, Gusen, and Melk; liberation in May 1945; hospitalization; illegal emigration to Palestine; incarceration on Cyprus; arriving in Palestine in 1946; and serving in the Israel-Arab War. Mr. H. discusses being emotionally numb, thinking only about death, then not thinking at all in Birkenau and wondering how he survived.
- Author/Creator
- H., Saul, 1925?-
- Published
- Ramat Aviv, Israel : Beth Hatefutsoth, Nahum Goldman Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, 1988
- Interview Date
- June 30, 1988.
- Locale
- Greece
Thessalonikē
Thessalonikē (Greece)
Cyprus
Palestine
- Cite As
- Saul H. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1839). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Rozner, Raphael, interviewer.
Graif, Gidʻon, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in Hebrew.
