- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Meir S., who was born in Svali︠a︡va, Czechoslovakia (presently Svali︠a︡va, Ukraine) in 1929, the sixth of seven children. He recounts his family's relative affluence; attending a Czech school and cheder; antisemitic harassment; the deaths of two siblings; Hungarian occupation; anti-Jewish restrictions; his father liquidating all their assets in summer 1939 to emigrate to Chile; the outbreak of war preventing their emigration; joining a relative in Uz︠h︡horod for nine months; moving to Mukacheve; attending a Jewish gymnasium; his brother escaping to Budapest; ghettoization in 1944; deportation with his family to Birkenau; claiming to be eighteen; separation with his father from his mother and sisters; obtaining extra bread for cleaning the latrines; sharing it with his father; seeing his mother through a fence; transfer to Auschwitz; his father telling him to work, get any food possible, and memorize his uncle's address in Chile; transfer to Jaworzno (he never saw his father again); slave labor hauling stones; trading his shoes for a better assignment; a prisoner official giving him extra food; sharing it with others; a Polish civilian worker giving him extra food; hospitalization; a Belgian prisoner-doctor saving him from selection; praying with another prisoner; a death march to Blechhammer in January 1945; abandonment by the guards; liberation by Soviet troops; returning to Mukacheve via Częstochowa, with assistance from the Joint; reunion with his brother; living with a non-Jewish woman who had saved and returned their belongings; a failed attempt to emigrate to Palestine via Bucharest; reunion with his mother and sisters in Prague; recovering from tuberculosis in a sanatorium; emigrating with his sister to England via Paris in June 1946; hospitalization; living in a Jewish boys home; marriage; his mother and sisters emigrating to Israel; and joining them with his wife and children in 1967.
- Author/Creator
- S., Meir, 1929-
- Published
- London, England : British Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1993
- Interview Date
- November 17, 1993.
- Locale
- Ukraine
Mukacheve
Czechoslovakia
Svali︠a︡va (Ukraine)
Uz︠h︡horod (Ukraine)
Mukacheve (Ukraine)
Bucharest (Romania)
Prague (Czech Republic)
Paris (France)
England
- Cite As
- Meir S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2501). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Hurst, Stephanie, interviewer.
