Rabbi Anshel W. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Rabbi Anshel W., who was born in Vilna, Poland in 1911. He recalls prewar Jewish life; his entry into the Yeshiva of Mir; the Russian occupation in 1939; the relocation of the Yeshiva to Kadom, then to Kaunas where the whole Yeshiva obtained visas to Curacao from the Dutch consul and to Japan from the Japanese consul. He describes the train trip through Siberia to Vladivostok, then by boat to Kobe, Japan; the treatment of their group of 350 by the Japanese during the six months there; and their transfer to Shanghai in 1942 where a group of German Jews and a group of Russian Jews were already living. Rabbi W. remembers the support given by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee; German pressure on the Japanese to destroy the Jews; life in the Hongkew ghetto in Shanghai; the re-establishment of the Yeshiva; the bombing by the Americans followed by liberation in 1945; their emigration to the United States; and the re-establishment of the Yeshiva of Mir in Brooklyn, New York and Israel. He explains that the Jews who escaped to Shanghai and Japan did not know what was happening in Europe; that most of those in the Yeshiva group have remained in contact; that almost every Yeshiva in North America has faculty from their group; and his belief that a "Divine Hand" was holding them and a "Divine Eye" was watching them so they could continue the tradition of the Yeshiva.

2 videocassettes (3/4" u-matic)