Stefan S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3929)

Videotape testimony of Stefan S., who was born in Košice, Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (presently Slovakia) in 1916, one of two brothers. He recalls that his father was chief medical doctor of a large hospital; cordial relations with non-Jews; attending a Slovak high school; starting medical school in Prague in 1934; returning to Košice when the Hungarian occupation occurred; completing medical school in Zurich in 1940; working in a clinic in Budapest, then as a physician in Košice; his and his family's conversion to Christianity in 1942 by an evangelical priest, his father's friend, in the hope of saving themselves; deciding to escape despite his physician's exemption from deportation; he and his Serbian girlfriend (they later married) obtaining false papers from a colleague; traveling by himself to Budapest, then Subotica, where he reunited with his girlfriend; traveling to Sombor, then Petrovaradin; working for a veterinarian; moving to Novi Sad which had been liberated by partisans; working as a surgeon treating wounded soldiers; inadequate equipment and supplies; obtaining permission in Belgrade to return to Košice after the war; his son's birth twenty days after their arrival; learning his parents had been deported to Auschwitz and did not survive; reunion with his brother, who had hidden in Budapest; and his distinguished military and medical career. Dr. S. discusses the carnage and horror he witnessed and his sorrow that the people of Yugoslavia had to repeat this experience.