Arie R. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3780)

Videotape testimony of Arie R., who was born in Mezőkovácsháza, Hungary in 1922, the oldest of six children. He recounts his family's poverty; attending public school and cheder; his bar mitzvah; studying in Békéscsaba; living with an aunt in Budapest; working in a factory; visiting his father in a work camp; German invasion; working with the Ṿaʻadat (Relief and Rescue Committee) under Fülöp Freudiger, a member of the Judenrat, arranging to smuggle Jews to Romania; German invasion; traveling to Szentes, then Szeged; obtaining blank documents to make false papers; returning to Budapest with his future wife and her relatives; obtaining housing from his former boss; two sisters joining them; preparing forged documents; arrest; incarceration in Kistarcsa; obtaining a false birth certificate for his release; forging papers resulting in releases for others; obtaining papers for his father and others from Raoul Wallenberg; placing his father in a Swedish safe house; obtaining funds from the committee to provide food for Jewish children in a Red Cross safe house; liberation by Soviet troops; assistance from the Joint; marriage in 1945; emigration to Israel via Vienna; and reunion with his brother. Mr. R. notes learning his mother and sister were killed in Auschwitz; and not discussing his experiences with his grandchildren, thinking they would not believe him.