Testimony of Mikulash Gutman, born in Nitra, Czechoslovakia, 1930, regarding his experiences in Topolcany, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Gleiwitz

Testimony of Mikulash Gutman, born in Nitra, Czechoslovakia, 1930, regarding his experiences in Topolcany, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Gleiwitz Only child; small Jewish community in Velke Ripnany; his father is the manager of an agricultural farm; move to Topolcany following his father's bankruptcy before 1938; witness attends a state Jewish school; death of his father, 1938; life in a Neolog community in Topolcany. Outbreak of the war; decrees, 1939; attempts to stop deportations of Jews to extermination camps; increase in the persecutions after the Slovak National Uprising, 1944; his mother's escape; capture of his mother by Slovakian gendarmes; deportation of the witness to Auschwitz-Birkenau with his mother and stepfather, Sukkot (October) 1944; murder of his mother in the gas chambers; transfer to Gleiwitz with his stepfather; camp life including forced labor in a factory repairing railroad cars; transfer on foot toward Blechhammer; liberation, January 1945. Return to Slovakia via Gleiwitz; help from the Red Cross in Katowice; receives a laissez-passer document in Trebisov; move to Budapest via Miskolc, May 1945; move to Nitra; completion of his studies; coordination with a group to establish a village in Israel; aliya to Israel, 1949.