Abraham S. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Abraham S., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1929. He recalls his secular home; German invasion; moving to his father's hometown of Radoszyce; difficulties adjusting to orthodoxy and shtetl life; their return to ?o?dz?; ghettoization; his father's privileged status as a factory director; horrendous physical and psychological effects of the starvation; escaping a round-up due to his father's position; deportation to Auschwitz with his family in August 1944; separation from his brother and mother (he never saw them again); remaining with his father; pretending to be older to avoid selection; the smell of burning flesh; their transfer to Kaufering; forced labor; transfer to Dachau; his father's death; transfer to several camps; escape from a train with his uncle; capture; incarceration in Landsberg; liberation by United States troops; his uncle's death; recovering in Gauting tuberculosis sanitarium, then an ORT facility; and emigration to the United States. Mr. S. discusses becoming hardened from his experience, but teaching his children to care for others and take moral stances; his stroke at age forty-one which doctors ascribe to his camp experiences; reluctance to share his experiences with his children; and testifying at the trial of Kaufering's Kommandant. He shows photographs and documents.
Extent and Medium
2 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
- S., Abraham, -- 1929-
Corporate Bodies
- Zentral Krankenhaus Gauting.
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- World ORT Union.
- Landsberg (Concentration camp)
- Kaufering (Concentration camp)
- Dachau (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Survivor-child relations.
- Postwar experiences.
- War crime trials -- Germany.
- Child survivors.
- Postwar effects.
- Fathers and sons.
- Escapes.
- Jews -- Poland -- Łódź.
- Forced labor.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- Jewish ghettos.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Video tapes.
- Men.
- Holocaust survivors.
Places
- Łódź (Poland)
- Poland.
- Radoszyce (Poland)
- Łódź ghetto.
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat