Josef S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Josef S., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1930, the third of six children. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; attending cheder and public school; antisemitic harassment; German invasion in September 1939; cessation of schooling; smuggling goods with his sister and mother to support the family; ghettoization; smuggling food into the ghetto; his youngest sister's death from illness; his illness due to starvation; an aunt assisting his recovery; hospitalization for typhus; learning of his parents' deaths upon release; his youngest brother's death; he and his sisters continuing to smuggle food with assistance from non-Jews; brief imprisonments when he was caught; avoiding a major deportation in July 1942; escaping days later; efforts with his two sisters to throw food to their sister in the ghetto (they never saw her again); living in the attic of a Polish woman; separating from his sisters, although occasionally meeting; living with Polish children on the street, posing as a non-Jew; sleeping in fields, basements, and attics; a Polish woman offering to shelter him, his sisters, and their friends (she knew they were Jews); paying blackmailers; visiting the ghetto during Passover 1943; escaping before the ghetto uprising; leaving for a village as it became more dangerous even outside the ghetto; continuing to pay blackmailers; sleeping in a park with his sisters; separating from them to work on a village farm as a cowherd; learning Catholic prayers and hymns; moving when suspicions were aroused; selling bread to Soviets and Italians in a prisoner of war camp; and constantly changing locations.

17 videocassettes