Paul D. Holocaust testimony (HVT-48) interviewed by Dori Laub and Laurel Vlock,

Videotape testimony of Paul D., who was born in Moldava, Czechoslovakia, in 1935. Mr. D. describes his joyous childhood and the death of his father when Mr. D. was three years old; his family's move to Humenné, Slovakia, where his grandparents lived; being baptized in order to avoid deportation, and his feelings, then and now, regarding his baptism; and being smuggled into Moldava, which was then Hungarian territory, where he lived with his grandfather. He tells of the German occupation in 1944; a series of confrontations with an anti-Semitic teacher; the transfer of the Jews of Moldava to the Košice ghetto; and being smuggled back to Humenné, where he was reunited with his mother and stepfather. He recounts his flight with his parents, who had secured false papers, into the Tatra mountains; their unsuccessful attempt to join the partisans; and the arrest and disappearance of his father, who, he later learned, was killed. Mr. D. recalls his close relationship with his mother, with whom he survived the war; their respective strategies for survival; their hiding, first in Bratislava, where they were taken in by a young gentile woman, and later in a small town; the tragedies and atrocities which he witnessed; and the end of the war. He also reflects on the nature and images of his memory and his need to transmit his recollections to his children.