Harry E. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Harry E., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1915, one of eight children. He recounts his family's poverty; their move to Kuro?w, then Zwierzyniec; attending public school; antisemitic harassment; their return to Warsaw in 1925; participating in S.K.I.F., the Bund youth group; attending a Yiddish Bund school; working as a floorer; German invasion; a bombing killing his mother, sister, and baby niece; working with his wife and sister in a Bund sanatorium/orphanage in Miedzeszyn near Falenica; support from the Joint; bringing his younger brother there; leaving eighteen months later during a round-up; hiding with his wife, sister, and brother in many places in Warsaw, posing as Christians; doing construction work inside the ghetto; arrest with his crew; imprisonment; transfer to Praga; release; assisting the Bund resistance; constructing hiding places for resistance leaders; being blackmailed by Poles who knew he was Jewish; his wife and sister working as domestics for ethnic Germans; taking his brother to an orphanage (he never saw him again); attending a Bund meeting; participating in the Polish uprising in 1944; and crossing to the Soviet side. Mr. E. discusses prewar politics among Bundists, communists, Zionists, and many Poles who helped him and his family survive at great personal risk.
Extent and Medium
3 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony is open with permission.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- E., Harry, -- 1915-
Corporate Bodies
- Allgemeyner Idisher arbayṭerbund in Liṭa, Poylen un Rusland.
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
Subjects
- Jews -- Poland -- Warsaw.
- Jewish ghettos.
- Brothers.
- Husband and wife.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Poland.
- Orphanages -- Poland.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Jewish resistance.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, German.
- Men.
- Video tapes.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Hiding.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Brothers and sisters.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Resistance.
Places
- Falenica (Warsaw, Poland)
- Praga (Warsaw, Poland)
- Zwierzyniec (Poland)
- Miedzeszyn (Warsaw, Poland)
- Warsaw (Poland) -- History -- Uprising, 1944.
- Warsaw ghetto.
- Warsaw (Poland)
- Kurów (Lublin, Poland)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat