- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Ignatez R., who was born in Solotvyno, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in approximately 1923, one of five children. He recounts his family's affluence and orthodoxy; attending school and yeshiva in Frankfurt; returning home in 1935; Hungarian occupation; draft into a slave labor battalion; postings in Minsk, Ivano-Frankivsʹk (where he saw a grave from a Jewish mass killing), then Stalingrad; returning home via Budapest in February 1944; German invasion; deportation from Sighet to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation from his parents and siblings (none survived); slave labor in a coal mine in Janina; transfer to Buna/Monowitz; prisoners organizing a prayer service; losing his faith in God; a brutal beating by a guard; working as an electrician; seeing United States prisoners of war; bringing food to a hospitalized friend; trading with Polish villagers; sabotaging work, when it could not be discovered, in order to avoid reprisals; Allied bombings; fellow prisoner Primo Levi remaining when almost everyone left on a death march to Gleiwitz in January 1945; train transport to Landeshut; escape and recapture; liberation; returning home; traveling to Vienna, Paris, then Australia in 1948; meeting his future wife; and returning to London with her. Mr. R. discusses the importance to his survival of not losing hope, and the social order in camps.
- Author/Creator
- R., Ignatez, 1922-
- Published
- London, England : British Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1991
- Interview Date
- February 14, 1991.
- Locale
- Hungary
Poland
Czechoslovakia
Solotvyno (Ukraine)
Frankfurt am Main (Germany)
Vienna (Austria)
Paris (France)
Australia
Minsk (Belarus)
Budapest (Hungary)
Ivano-Frankivsʹk (Ukraine)
Sighet (Romania)
- Cite As
- Ignatez R. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2382). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Perry, Elliot, interviewer.
