Summary
Videotape testimony of Israel M., who was born in Hanušovce nad Topl̕ou, Czechoslovakia (presently Slovakia) in 1922, one of six children. He recounts one brother's illness and death; attending a Jewish school, then yeshivas in Šurany and Galanta; Slovak independence; anti-Jewish restrictions; forced labor building roads; escaping with a friend to Sátoraljaújhely; assistance from local Jews; visiting his brother in Košice; traveling to Sárospatak, then Budapest; obtaining false papers; arrest; transfer to Žilina; his sister smuggling money to him in a toothpaste tube; deportation to Auschwitz; slave labor unloading trains; receiving extra food from a SS guard; public hangings; obtaining a position at Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke (German Equipment Factory) through a friend; improved conditions; sharing extra food with prisoners in the hospital; praying with a group, exchanging bread for potatoes during Passover; a death march, then train transfer to Mauthausen in January 1945; transfer to Vienna; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to Budapest, then home; reunion with his sister; moving to Bratislava; marriage in 1947; illegal emigration to Palestine; and serving in the military during the 1948 war. Mr. M. notes retaining his religious faith in Auschwitz and his almost fifty grandchildren representing his victory over Hitler.