Imre K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4089)

Videotape testimony of Imre K., a Nobel prize laureate in literature, who was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1929. He recounts his family background; their assimilated, Hungarian life style; his parents' divorce when he was five; being sent to an a boys boarding school; his parents' remarriages about six years later; dividing his time between his parents; compulsory religious education in school; segregation of the Jewish students in gymnasium; German invasion in March 1944; his father's death in a Hungarian slave labor battalion; deportation to Auschwitz; transfer to Buchenwald when he was close to death; the prisoner assigned to distribute bread risking his life to give Mr. K. his portion; prisoners advising him to say he was older and moving him to a protected area; living with his mother after liberation; his interest in music; beginning to write; disillusionment with communism; difficulty obtaining good literature due to censorship; easing of conditions after the 1956 revolt; and the eventual publication of his books. Mr. K. discusses many writers and their influence on him; qualities and limits of language in concentration camps, speaking, and writing; issues of translation; using life experiences in his writing, giving examples from specific books; his struggle to convey both Nazi and Stalinist totalitarian regimes through his writing; his first visit to the west in 1938 to the Goethe Institute in Germany; recognition as a writer outside of Hungary rather than in Hungary; living a normal emotional life, despite his camp experiences, due to his resilience; and his identity both as a Jew and Hungarian. He reads from several of his books.