Arie Z. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Arie Z., who was born in Pruz︠h︡any, Poland (presently Belarus), in 1923, the elder of two children. He recounts his father managing the estate of a Russian princess; attending Hebrew schools; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; increasing antisemtism, including his father being fired in 1938; his finding another job on a distant estate near the Bialowieza Forest; his visits; completing gymnasium in 1939; German invasion on September 1; joining his father with his mother and sister; Soviet occupation; returning home; his father joining them; completing final exams for the Soviet school in June 1941; German invasion; ghettoization; his father's employment by the Judenrat; a former Polish neighbor, a radio expert, employing him in his workshop outside the ghetto; smuggling food; taking bullets from visiting German soldiers; transfering them to those who escaped to the partisans; deportation with his family to Auschwitz/Birkenau in January 1943; separation from his mother and sister; slave labor building rail lines; his father's hospitalization (he never saw him again); transfer to Zgoda; slave labor in a munitions factory with Soviet prisoners of war; joining a group in winter 1944 digging an escape tunnel (he was the only Jew); escaping two months later; hiding by himself; posing as a non-Jewish escapee to receive assistance from Poles; and capture by a Volksdeutsche five weeks later.

15 videocassettes