Shlomo S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Shlomo S., who was born in Kraków, Poland, one of five children. He recounts attending cheder, then Mizrachi school; training with Akiva for two years; his older sister's emigration to Palestine in 1938; returning to Kraków in 1939; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; forced labor as a gardener; his family's expulsion to Rzeszów; working as a translator in a garage; ghettoization; traveling to the Rzeszów ghetto, dressed as a German; seeing his family for the last time; bringing his friend's girlfriend back to Kraków; obtaining a job in the garage for Heshek Bauminger; joining Bauminger's underground group; obtaining false papers through Judenrat contacts and from priests outside the ghetto; assisting with bombing the Cyganeria café, where Germans were killed and injured; escaping; hiding with non-Jews; arrest in early 1943; interrogation and torture for six weeks in Montelupich prison; a friend sharing food; deportation to Auschwitz; slave labor; transfer to Golleschau; forming a group with two friends from Kraków; working in a mine with Greek Jews; public hangings; a Polish supervisor giving him extra food; hospitalization; a death march in January 1945; train transfer to Mauthausen; transfer to Oranienburg and Flossenbürg; a death march to Ganacker; escaping from a death march; receiving food, clothing, and shelter from a German family; liberation by United States troops; living in Eggenfelden, then Altötting displaced persons camp; marriage; traveling to Salon; illegal emigration by ship to Palestine; interdiction by the British; incarceration on Cyprus, then ʻAtlit; release; and serving in the 1948 war. Mr. S. discusses the importance of being with friends to his survival; instinctively continuing in the camps despite wanting to die; and the loss of approximately seventy close relatives in the Holocaust. He shows photographs.

6 videocassettes