Testimony of Chaim Yosef Katz, born in Kisvarda, Hungary, 1924, regarding his experiences in the Kisvarda Ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Melk and Ebensee

Testimony of Chaim Yosef Katz, born in Kisvarda, Hungary, 1924, regarding his experiences in the Kisvarda Ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Melk and Ebensee Life before the war; attends school and a "heder"; Jewish community; displays of antisemitism; his father’s military service. Deportation of his uncle to Ukraine; German occupation, March 1944; decrees; deportation to the Kisvarda Ghetto; ghetto life including service in the Jewish police; confiscation of property and valuables; deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau; his mother's pregnancy; camp life including the burning of prayer shawls and tefillin; meets a Jewish man after their transfer from Theresienstadt; transfer of his father to Mauthausen; transfer to Melk; camp life; transfer to Ebensee; camp life; eating of horse meat and instances of cannibalism; death of his father from typhus; liberation. Volunteers in a hospital; capture by the Red Army; release; typhus and hospitalization; rehabilitation in Hungary; aliya attempt, 1946; detention in Cyprus; aliya to Eretz Israel; active combat in Israel's War of Independence; life in Kibbutz Beerot Yitzchak; marriage, 1958; death of his son in Israel's Peace for Galilee Operation.