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George K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2734) interviewed by Josie Riger and Fred Barko,

Oral History | Fortunoff Collection ID: HVT-2734

Videotape testimony of George K., who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1922, one of four children. He recounts his family's affluence; living in Pápa; increasing antisemitism and anti-Jewish legislation; draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion for three months in 1943, despite his and his father's exemption due to the latter's World War I military service; German invasion in March 1944; ghettoization; transfer to a brick factory; forced labor; transfer with his father to Sárvár with his father; deportation to Auschwitz; slave labor digging trenches and building barracks; frequent beatings; he and another prisoner trading with Polish civilians for extra food; transfer to the kitchen; encountering his brother, and Mary K., his future wife; transfer with his brother to Lieberose; his brother's hospitalization (he never saw him again); transfer to Sachsenhausen; slave labor in a factory; a German overseer giving him extra food; public executions of Soviets who sabotaged the work; liberation from a death march by United States troops; working for them as a translator; traveling to Budapest via Leipzig and Prague; reunion with Mary K.; returning home (only his twin sister had survived); marriage; the death of his first child; reopening his family's factory; its confiscation by the Communists; escaping to Austria during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956; and emigration to the United States.

Author/Creator
K., George, 1922-
Published
Mahwah, N.J. : Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 1994
Interview Date
May 25, 1994.
Locale
Hungary
Pápa
Budapest (Hungary)
Pápa (Hungary)
Prague (Czech Republic)
Leipzig (Germany)
Austria
Language
English
Copies
4 copies: 3/4 in. dub; Betacam SP restoration master; Betacam SP restoration submaster; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
Cite As
George K. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2734). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
 
View in Yale University Library Catalog: http://hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/4296965
Record last modified: 2018-06-04 13:28:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/hvt4296965