Mayer Z. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Mayer Z., who was born in Piotrko?w, Poland in 1921. He recalls economic, but not social, contacts between Poles and Jews; attending Polish public school; antisemitic incidents; participating in a Zionist organization with his brother; German occupation; anti-Jewish violence; ghettoization; organized cultural and educational activities in the ghetto; starvation, overcrowding, and forced deportation to a camp in Lublin in 1940; digging ditches (he still has nightmares about this); returning home two weeks later; contacts with the Warsaw underground; working in a glass factory; separation from his parents and brother when the ghetto was liquidated in 1942 (he never saw them again); forced labor in a wood factory in July 1943; deportation to Buchenwald in November 1944; forced labor in stone quarries for three weeks; transfer to Schleiben; working in an ammunition factory; train evacuation to Theresienstadt; liberation by Soviet troops; and reunion with his future wife upon returning to Poland. Mr. Z. discusses revenge against Jewish collaborators and Judenrat members and his ambiguous feelings at liberation, knowing there was nothing left of his previous life.

4 videocassettes