{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/st7dr2qz14/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Zoltan G."]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/005/original/Fortunoff-Logo.png?1549333634","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eZoltan G. was born on July 15th, 1925 in a village in Slovakia now called Nový Sad. He comes from a family with eleven children: seven sisters and three brothers. The parents operated a general store, from which the peasants from the surrounding villages would buy goods. During the summer holidays, Zoltan was often sent to his grandfather, who owned a large farm in a neighboring town.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eZoltan grew up in a rural area where people lived primarily from the produce of their fields. He found friends among the peasant children in his surroundings. At school, the coexistence of Jewish and Catholic children appears to have been smooth. However, there were differences: While the Catholic classmates said the Lord's Prayer, the Jewish children had to keep quiet. After school, when many of his classmates had to go hand in hand with their parents to work, Zoltan went to cheder for his Jewish education. He describes his parents as not devout, but nevertheless deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition. The Jewish holidays were observed, and the Shabbat was welcomed every Friday evening with a sumptuous meal.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThe economic situation of the family deteriorated rapidly after the Hungarian occupation. The change in currency from Czech crowns to Hungarian pengö ruined his parents' business. After the expropriation, only the house and a vegetable garden remained for the family. The sisters helped in maintain the family by working as seamstresses. In 1939 or 1940, Zoltan was sent by his parents to Budapest to earn his living there. He initially found work as a carpenter and later in a workshop for children's strollers. After recovering from a bout with scarlet fever, he returned to his family in the spring of 1944.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThe homecoming coincided closely with the ghettoization of the Jews of Nový Sad and the surrounding villages. In the Hungarian city of Sátoraljaújhely, the Jews were first herded together in the synagogue and then into a newly-established ghetto, from which Zoltan, his parents and eight of his brothers and sisters were deported to Auschwitz about two weeks later. In the selection on the ramp, his mother and her four youngest children were selected to die in the gas chamber. Zoltan lost track of four of his sisters, but found them again in his native village after the war. He found himself together with his father again in a labor commando for agriculture in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThe forced labor was hard: The men were awakened at three o'clock in the morning and marched out after roll call to the field work, from which they returned at dusk. The walk between the camp and the workplace took between half an hour to a full hour. There was one meal a day and a weekly bonus for the commando workers. Zoltan remembers endlessly mowing lawns with a scythe. An otherwise brutal SS man took a shine to him and rewarded him with apples or pears for his work. His father, not up to the exertions of such work, spent some time working in the camp kitchen, and in October 1944 sent his son a farewell letter through a fellow prisoner. As Zoltan cut the grass near the crematoria, he could see how the people from the transports were directed into the gas chambers and heard the prayers of women. In his commando there were several suicides due to the unbearable working conditions.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eZoltan managed to stay alive until January 1945, when the agricultural commando of Birkenau was evacuated. The prisoners marched driving cattle under SS supervision until past Katowice, where they were loaded into open boxcars, despite the sub-zero temperatures. Zoltan estimates that of 120 prisoners, 20 arrived alive in Buchenwald Concentration Camp. After a week, he was sent to work in the Hermann-Göring-Werke in Halle an der Saale. In this factory there were civilian workers working alongside concentration camp prisoners, and the working conditions were significantly better.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThe greatest difficulty for Zoltan, throughout his imprisonment in the concentration camp, was to satisfy his hunger. In Halle an der Saale, he saw desparate Russian prisoners cut meat from the bodies of their fellow prisoners.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eWhen the prisoners were evacuated in April and May 1945, Zoltan managed to escape. He was initially re-captured, but later hid under a bridge until the region fell into the hands of the U.S. Army. After a six-week hospitalization, Zoltan at first planned to enlist as a soldier in the U.S. Army in the war against Japan, but instead made his way to Slovakia, where he reunited with four of his sisters and two of his brothers in Nový Sad. The siblings settled in Chomutov, in what was then the Czech Republic.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1947-1948 Zoltan was in Bavaria, and went from there, with the help of the Zionist Organization Beitar, illegally to Palestine. He fought in the 1948 Palestine War and remained in Israel until 1951. One of his sisters was living in the United States and tried to bring Zoltan there. An attempt to emigrate to Canada failed because of the bureaucratic requirements. In 1954 he finally emigrated to Brazil, where he and a friend founded a small transport company in São Paulo. There he met his wife, with whom he came to the USA in 1956. Over the years, he acquired and operated a series of guesthouses. To this day Zoltan G. lives in Connecticut and has three grown children and several grandchildren.\u003c/p\u003e (Abstract)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["https://archiv.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de/en/interviews/za578"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2005-12-16 (creation)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["G., Zoltan, 1925-07-15 (Interviewee)","Laub, Dori, 1937-06-08 - 2018-06-23 (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["3 videotapes"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Forced Labor (topical)","Video tapes (topical)","Oral histories (document genres) (genre_form)","Sátoraljaújhely Ghetto (Person or Corporate Body)","Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp (Person or Corporate Body)","Buchenwald Concentration Camp (Person or Corporate Body)","Langenstein-Zwieberge Sub-Concentration Camp (Person or Corporate Body)","Asten DP Camp (Person or Corporate Body)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["New Haven, Conn. (Place of Recording)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Relation"]},"value":{"en":["Zoltan G. Interview za578. Interview Archive „Forced Labor 1939-1945“. Access at https://archiv.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de/en/interviews/za578 (conforms to)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["za578 (Source Identifier)"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eZoltan G. was born on July 15th, 1925 in a village in Slovakia now called Nov\u0026yacute; Sad. He comes from a family with eleven children: seven sisters and three brothers. The parents operated a general store, from which the peasants from the surrounding villages would buy goods. During the summer holidays, Zoltan was often sent to his grandfather, who owned a large farm in a neighboring town.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eZoltan grew up in a rural area where people lived primarily from the produce of their fields. He found friends among the peasant children in his surroundings. At school, the coexistence of Jewish and Catholic children appears to have been smooth. However, there were differences: While the Catholic classmates said the Lord's Prayer, the Jewish children had to keep quiet. After school, when many of his classmates had to go hand in hand with their parents to work, Zoltan went to cheder for his Jewish education. He describes his parents as not devout, but nevertheless deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition. The Jewish holidays were observed, and the Shabbat was welcomed every Friday evening with a sumptuous meal.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThe economic situation of the family deteriorated rapidly after the Hungarian occupation. The change in currency from Czech crowns to Hungarian peng\u0026ouml; ruined his parents' business. After the expropriation, only the house and a vegetable garden remained for the family. The sisters helped in maintain the family by working as seamstresses. In 1939 or 1940, Zoltan was sent by his parents to Budapest to earn his living there. He initially found work as a carpenter and later in a workshop for children's strollers. After recovering from a bout with scarlet fever, he returned to his family in the spring of 1944.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThe homecoming coincided closely with the ghettoization of the Jews of Nov\u0026yacute; Sad and the surrounding villages. In the Hungarian city of S\u0026aacute;toralja\u0026uacute;jhely, the Jews were first herded together in the synagogue and then into a newly-established ghetto, from which Zoltan, his parents and eight of his brothers and sisters were deported to Auschwitz about two weeks later. In the selection on the ramp, his mother and her four youngest children were selected to die in the gas chamber. Zoltan lost track of four of his sisters, but found them again in his native village after the war. He found himself together with his father again in a labor commando for agriculture in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThe forced labor was hard: The men were awakened at three o'clock in the morning and marched out after roll call to the field work, from which they returned at dusk. The walk between the camp and the workplace took between half an hour to a full hour. There was one meal a day and a weekly bonus for the commando workers. Zoltan remembers endlessly mowing lawns with a scythe. An otherwise brutal SS man took a shine to him and rewarded him with apples or pears for his work. His father, not up to the exertions of such work, spent some time working in the camp kitchen, and in October 1944 sent his son a farewell letter through a fellow prisoner. As Zoltan cut the grass near the crematoria, he could see how the people from the transports were directed into the gas chambers and heard the prayers of women. In his commando there were several suicides due to the unbearable working conditions.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eZoltan managed to stay alive until January 1945, when the agricultural commando of Birkenau was evacuated. The prisoners marched driving cattle under SS supervision until past Katowice, where they were loaded into open boxcars, despite the sub-zero temperatures. Zoltan estimates that of 120 prisoners, 20 arrived alive in Buchenwald Concentration Camp. After a week, he was sent to work in the Hermann-G\u0026ouml;ring-Werke in Halle an der Saale. In this factory there were civilian workers working alongside concentration camp prisoners, and the working conditions were significantly better.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThe greatest difficulty for Zoltan, throughout his imprisonment in the concentration camp, was to satisfy his hunger. In Halle an der Saale, he saw desparate Russian prisoners cut meat from the bodies of their fellow prisoners.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eWhen the prisoners were evacuated in April and May 1945, Zoltan managed to escape. He was initially re-captured, but later hid under a bridge until the region fell into the hands of the U.S. Army. After a six-week hospitalization, Zoltan at first planned to enlist as a soldier in the U.S. Army in the war against Japan, but instead made his way to Slovakia, where he reunited with four of his sisters and two of his brothers in Nov\u0026yacute; Sad. The siblings settled in Chomutov, in what was then the Czech Republic.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eIn 1947-1948 Zoltan was in Bavaria, and went from there, with the help of the Zionist Organization Beitar, illegally to Palestine. He fought in the 1948 Palestine War and remained in Israel until 1951. One of his sisters was living in the United States and tried to bring Zoltan there. An attempt to emigrate to Canada failed because of the bureaucratic requirements. In 1954 he finally emigrated to Brazil, where he and a friend founded a small transport company in S\u0026atilde;o Paulo. There he met his wife, with whom he came to the USA in 1956. Over the years, he acquired and operated a series of guesthouses. To this day Zoltan G. lives in Connecticut and has three grown children and several grandchildren.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"provider":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/005/original/Fortunoff-Logo.png?1549333634","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/208/002/small/ZA578_03_01_sd720p.mp4_1694855578.jpg?1694855579","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107104/file/208002","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 3 - ZA578_03_01_sd720p.mp4"]},"duration":3643.2,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/208/002/small/ZA578_03_01_sd720p.mp4_1694855578.jpg?1694855579","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107104/file/208002/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107104/file/208002/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-fortunoff.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/208/002/original/ZA578_03_01_sd720p.mp4?1694855573","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":3643.2,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107104/file/208002","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[]},{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107104/file/208001","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 2 of 3 - ZA578_03_02_sd720p.mp4"]},"duration":3516.0,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/208/001/small/ZA578_03_02_sd720p.mp4_1694855499.jpg?1694855500","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107104/file/208001/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107104/file/208001/content/2/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-fortunoff.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/208/001/original/ZA578_03_02_sd720p.mp4?1694855494","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":3516.0,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107104/file/208001","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[]},{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107104/file/208000","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 3 of 3 - ZA578_03_03_sd720p.mp4"]},"duration":2275.2,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/208/000/small/ZA578_03_03_sd720p.mp4_1694855066.jpg?1694855067","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107104/file/208000/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107104/file/208000/content/3/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-fortunoff.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/208/000/original/ZA578_03_03_sd720p.mp4?1694855062","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":2275.2,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107104/file/208000","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[]}]}