- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Viliam G., who was born in Hlohovec, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1923. He recalls his father was principal and taught in an orthodox school; increasingly severe restrictions on Jews under the Hlinka guard; his sister's deportation; his father's influence obtaining his (Viliam's) position sorting the confiscated property of deported Jews, thus exempting him from deportation until 1944; a non-Jewish woman hiding him after the arrival of German troops; arrest; interrogation by the Gestapo in Trenčin, then incarceration in Sered; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in November 1944; hospitalization; meeting his father in the hospital; he and his father helping other prisoners; liberation by Soviet troops; repatriation with his parents and sister; a long recuperation in Poprad, then Kvetnica; meeting his future wife; and returning to Hlohovec. Mr. G. notes feigning work in camps on Saturday in order to observe the Sabbath; the importance of luck to his survival (e.g. arriving at Auschwitz/Birkenau after the gas chambers no longer were in operation); his father becoming a rabbi after the war; the murder of his wife's entire family and almost all of his extended family in the Holocaust; and continuing terrifying nightmares.
- Author/Creator
- G., Viliam, 1923-
- Published
- Bratislava, Slovakia : Milan Šimečka Foundation, 1996
- Interview Date
- February 1,1996.
- Locale
- Czechoslovakia
Hlohovec (Slovakia)
Trenčín (Slovakia)
Poprad (Slovakia)
Kvetnica (Slovakia)
- Cite As
- Viliam G. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3894). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Salner, Peter, interviewer.
Antalová, Ingrid, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in Slovak.
