- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Eldar B., who was born in Humenné, Czechoslovakia in 1924, one of four children. He recounts a wonderful childhood; participating in Betar; expulsion from school in 1939 due to anti-Jewish restrictions; working at a lumber mill; round-up for forced labor in 1942; deportation to Auschwitz via Žilina; transfer to Birkenau; slave labor building roads; guards beating a prisoner to death; being beaten for helping a friend obtain extra soup; volunteering for the Sonderkommando; digging trenches for mass graves and collecting corpses; public hangings; transfer to construction, building crematoria; a Polish worker sharing food; spending ten nights in an underground bunker for hitting a non-Jewish prisoner; assignment to driving horse wagons; receiving food and trading goods with locals when outside the camp; a death march and transport in open box cars to Gross-Rosen; transfer to Dachau, then Schongau; abandonment by the guards; liberation by United States troops; traveling to Plzeň; marriage in 1948 (his wife converted to Judaism); and emigration to Israel in 1949. Mr. B. discusses learning no one from his family had survived; very few of his original transport surviving (Otto P., HVT-3998 is one); continuing fears resulting from his experiences; not sharing his story, even with his children; and not wanting to give the impression that it was heroic to survive.
- Author/Creator
- B., Eldar, 1924-
- Published
- Tel Aviv, Israel : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1997 and 1998
- Interview Date
- December 18, 1997 and January 1, 1998.
- Locale
- Czechoslovakia
Humenné (Slovakia)
Žilina (Slovakia)
Schongau (Germany)
Plzeň (Czech Republic)
- Cite As
- Eldar B. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3906). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in Hebrew.
Related material: Otto P. Holocaust testimony [friend] (HVT-3998), Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
