Title
Arthur R. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2574) [videorecording] / interviewed by Joni-Sue Blinderman, April 1, 1993.
Notes
Associated material: Rubin, Arthur. Interview 10919. Visual History Archive, USC Shoah Foundation. Access at https://vha.usc.edu.
Summary
Videotape testimony of Arthur R., who was born in Derecske, Hungary in 1928, one of seven children. In a reflective and detailed testimony, he remembers centering their life on the synagogue, religious school, Sabbath, and Jewish holidays; increasing antisemitism in the mid-1930s; rescinding of Jewish business licenses, including his father's; increasing poverty; his father's draft into a Hungarian forced labor battalion; German occupation in 1944; ghettoization in Nagyvárad (Oradea); deportation to Auschwitz; separation from his mother and younger brothers (they perished); pervasive hunger; maintaining contact with one brother and sister (they did not survive); selections; volunteering for transport thinking he could not survive in Auschwitz; transfer to Braunschweig; slave labor at a truck factory; help from his German supervisor; praying daily; the factory's destruction in Allied bombings; transfer to Watenstedt, Ravensbrück, and Woebbelin; liberation by United States troops; recovering at a military hospital, then in Helsingborg, Sweden; learning his father survived; and emigrating to the United States. Mr. R. discusses difficulties completing school with much younger students; reunion with his father; his marriage and children; recurring nightmares of leaving his home; and a disturbing visit to Germany. He shows photographs, documents, and artifacts.