Simon F. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4405) interviewed by Joanne Weiner Rudof

Videotape testimony of Simon F., who was born in Amsterdam, Netherlands in 1935. He recounts his family's affluence; his father's emigration to the United States immediately before the war; attending a Jewish school; being warned by non-Jews there would be a raid on the school and all the students leaving; wearing the yellow star; frequent round-ups; his paternal grandparents living with them; his grandfather's death; obtaining identity papers from South America; deportation with his mother, sister, and grandmother to Westerbork; transfer in winter 1942 to Bergen-Belsen; finding a prayer book walking from the train to the camp; assignment to the Sternlager (a barrack for prisoners with passports from countries for potential exchange); starvation and lack of sanitation; observing his sister's bat mitzvah; his grandmother reciting psalms everyday; an angry “conversation” with God when his mother was critically ill; learning they were on the list for transfer; his mother refusing to leave without his grandmother (the authorities acceded); transfer to Lindele (Biberach) via Stuttgart, then to the Swiss border; reunion with relatives there; his transfer to a sanitarium for nine months to recuperate from severe lung disease; and emigration to join his father in the United States. Mr. F. discusses permanent physical and psychological damage resulting from his concentration camp experiences, and the importance of his continuing belief in God. He shows the prayer book that he found en route to Belsen.