Shraga P. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Shraga P., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1924, the second of four children. He recounts a sister's death in 1934; attending public school; his father's death; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; working at the family store in Kolumna; attending Hashomer camps; German invasion; random forced labor; ghettoization; his grandfather's death days later; joining a hachshara with his older brother in Marysin; starving people from the ghetto taking their crops; returning to the ghetto in January 1941; clandestine Hashomer meetings; being assigned to work in a public kitchen enabling him to give his rations to his mother and siblings; reassignment to to a nursing home until spring 1942, then to a factory kitchen; his mother's deportation; remaining with his brother and sister; hiding Zionist youth groups members who had been listed for deportation; arrest by Jewish police in summer 1944; his brother arranging his release; working in a factory kitchen; a speech by Ḥayim Rumkowski, Jewish head of the ghetto, in his workplace; round-up with his siblings; escaping; hiding for a month with a friend in the evacuated ghetto; sneaking into the group clearing the remains of the ghetto; interrogation and beating by Kommandant Hans Biebow; being assigned to clean septic tanks, then clearing the former ghetto; escaping with five others during the Soviet bombardment in January 1945; liberation by Soviet troops; election as the Zionist representative to the Jewish Council; and organizing a Hashomer congress in 1946. He shows photographs and documents.

15 videocassettes