Szlama G. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4290) interviewed by Yannis Thanassekos and Jean-Marie De Becker

Videotape testimony of Szlama G., who was born in Etterbeek, Belgium in 1922 to Polish-Jewish émigrés. He recounts his family was totally assimilated; attending public school in Brussels; learning he was Jewish after being harassed as a Jew; participating in a Zionist youth group; German invasion; fleeing to Halle; returning home; working as a tailor; refusing to wear the star; his boss allowing him to sleep at his house to avoid round-ups; his parents' deportation to Malines in 1942 (he never saw them again); working as a librarian at the synagogue; obtaining false papers; denouncement by a Jewish collaborator; deportation to Malines, Auschwitz/Birkenau, then Gleiwitz; slave labor building barracks, in a factory, and painting; public executions; a Belgian prisoner providing him with extra bread; a death march to Blechhammer; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to Kraków; hospitalization; and returning to Belgium with assistance from the Red Cross. Mr. G. discusses relations among nationality groups and camp hierarchies; focusing solely on survival from minute to minute; his belief that survival was due to luck; and two visits to Auschwitz.