Leon B. Holocaust testimony

Identifier
HVT 3317
Language of Description
English
Level of Description
Collection
Source
EHRI Partner

Abstract

Videotape testimony of Leon B., who was born in Katowice, Poland in 1919, one of three children. He recounts his family's affluence; attending cheder and a German school; participating in Zionist groups, including Betar; a lecture by Vladimir Jabotinsky; his father purchasing land in Israel; managing a Zionist youth camp in Sękowa in summer 1939; German invasion; fleeing with his father and sister to Będzin; his mother and brother joining them; moving to Sosnowiec; organizing a Zionist group with Yiśraʼel Ḳoz'ukh and others; warning fellow Jews not to report for deportation; forced labor building roads; deportation to Gross Masselwitz; escaping back to Sosnowiec; forming an underground group; meetings with Jewish resistance leaders Eliezer Geller and Mordecai Anielewicz; his mother's arrest; obtaining her release by threatening Moshe Merin, head of the Judenrat; meeting with Polish partisans from Armia Krajowa; traveling with a Pole to Częstochowa and its ghetto using false papers, then to another city where he obtained weapons; ghettoization; hiding with non-Jewish friends; sending their group members and their parents to Austria and Hungary as non-Jews; escaping to Vienna; arrest; escaping to Sosnowiec; hiding with Polish friends; being smuggled to Budapest in November 1943; and reunion with his parents and friends, whose escapes he had arranged.

Extent and Medium

10 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.

Related Units of Description

  • Related material: Tusia H. Holocaust testimony friend, Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Rules and Conventions

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Process Info

  • compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

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Genre

This description is derived directly from structured data provided to EHRI by a partner institution. This collection holding institution considers this description as an accurate reflection of the archival holdings to which it refers at the moment of data transfer.