Max M. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Max M., who was born in Ri?ga, Latvia, in 1924. He recalls his education; prewar antisemitism; his father's reluctance to emigrate; Soviet occupation in 1940; nationalization of the family business; a forced move to the suburb Kaiserwald; the German invasion; increasing antisemitic restrictions; and his mother's deportation in July 1941. Mr. M. describes ghettoization; seeking indoor work to obtain food; his uncle's disappearance; the Judenrat's forced choice between collaboration or death "in a lawless society"; Aktions in late 1941 when some 30,000 Jews were shot in nearby Rumbuli forest; and the killing of his father. He details two years in the city's small ghetto; frictions with arriving German Jews; moving in late 1943 to the labor camp of Wasserstrasse to help build the Kaiserwald camp; being beaten in Kaiserwald in 1944; transport to Stutthof, then Magdeburg; work in an armaments factory; and being beaten for taking potato skins from the garbage. He relates escaping in April 1945; hiding with four comrades in ruins for four weeks; liberation by Soviet troops; escape from the Soviet zone to a displaced persons camp near Frankfurt; and emigration to the United States in early 1947.

3 videocassettes (3/4" u-matic)