Shlomo P. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3825)

Videotape testimony of Shlomo P., who was born in Vienna, Austria in 1925. He recounts living in Čadca; his father's position as a railroad physician; attending Jewish and Slovak schools, then gymnasium in Žilina; increasing antisemitism in the 1930s; participating in Makabi ha-tsaʻir; his brother's emigration to Palestine in 1939; attending a Zionist youth camp; expulsion from school; his father being forbidden to practice medicine; the Hlinka Guard confiscating family belongings; his father's non-Jewish colleagues supplying drugs when his grandmother was terminally ill; living on a Zionist training farm in Malý Báb; his father arranging for his hospitalization in Turčiansky Sv. Martin to avoid deportation; returning home; a priest arranging a medical position for his father in Oščadnica to save him from deportation; obtaining false papers; working as a non-Jew; his supervisor, who knew he was Jewish, transferring him to Liptovský Mikuláš to avoid arrest; a village official arranging for him to join his parents in Oščadnica; a temporary office position; taking official identification forms that he gave to Makabi ha-tsaʻir in Žilina; communication from his brother via the Red Cross; the Slovak uprising endangering them; hiding with his parents in a forest bunker for the entire winter; non-Jews providing their food; liberation by Soviet troops; learning of the death camps and mass killings; his parents' emigration to Israel in 1949; studying medicine; and joining them two years later. Mr. P. discusses his daughter's insistence that they visit all the sites where he was in Slovakia, including the location of the bunker.