Cesare F. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4241) [videorecording] / interviewed by Zelda Kaplan and Harriet Tarnor Wacks, April 30, 2002.

Peabody, Mass. : Holocaust Center of the Jewish Federation of the North Shore, 2002.

1 videorecording (1 hr., 12 min.) : col.

English

Any use of this testimony before 2033 requires prior approval of the donor or his heirs.

Videotape testimony of Cesare F., who was born in Naples, Italy to a Jewish, Hungarian mother and Catholic, Italian father. He recounts moving to Budapest with his mother in 1938 to protect his father's career as a musical composer; his mother working as a seamstress since Jews could not be in the ballet (she was a ballerina); being raised as a Catholic; attending mass every Sunday; German invasion in March 1944; orders to move to a yellow-star house; his mother trying to get him to Italy via Switzerland; the man his father paid to take him to Switzerland bringing him instead to a Catholic orphanage in Visegrád; humane treatment despite limited food; liberation by Soviet troops; returning to Budapest; living at the Red Cross; placement with a family in Apagy; reunion with his mother eighteen months later (she had been in Ravensbrück and Sachsenhausen); their return to Budapest; persecution by the communists because he would not take Hungarian citizenship; reunion with his father in Italy in 1956 (he had remarried thinking they were dead); happily caring for his mother the rest of her life; and emigration to the United States. Mr. F. notes learning of his mother's war experiences from documents and friends since she never discussed them.

June 26, 2003

Cesare F. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4241). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Cesare F. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4241). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)