Aharon A. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Aharon A., a prize-winning, internationally recognized author, who was born in Zhadova, Romania (presently Ukraine) in 1932, the only child of an affluent family. He recounts the family move to Chernivt︠s︡i shortly after his birth; their assimilated life style; his gentle, loving, and privileged childhood until age eight; speaking German and Yiddish; Soviet occupation; fear of exile to Siberia; German invasion; hearing gun shots from his bed in their country home; hiding in nearby fields; reuniting with his father who told him his mother and grandmother had been killed; ghettoization; transfer to Transnistria; his father being sent to a work camp; his escape; posing as a non-Jew (he was blond and spoke Ukrainian) for two years; living in fields and forests, working for framers and once for a prostitute; accompanying the Soviet military; witnessing routine rapes of women of all ages by Soviet soldiers; being sent to a children's home in Italy after the war; "unlearning" lying, cheating, and stealing, behaviors that led to his survival; illegal emigration by ship to Palestine in 1946; interdiction by the British; a three-month imprisonment; assignment to a farm for two years; studying Hebrew; bible, and literature, his first real education; reunion with his father, his only surviving relative, in the early 1950s; and becoming a writer. Mr. A. discusses becoming a humanist despite the scars of his experiences; the influence of other writers on his work; writing in Hebrew; literature as his connection to the metaphysical; the importance of "place" (Europe and Israel) and sensory memories to his fiction; his belief he was saved by his connection with nature; the complexity of the Holocaust; and its omni-presence in all his work.

10 videocassettes