Leo L. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Leo L., who was born in 1924 in ?o?dz?, Poland, one of eight children. He recounts his family's Hasidism and extreme poverty; antisemitic harassment; work from age fourteen; cutting his payis (sidecurls) and buying non-Hasidic clothing; his older brother's death in 1938; German invasion; ghettoization; smuggling food with assistance from a non-Jew; denouncement in October 1940; arrest, interrogation, and severe beating; hospitalization; release three weeks later; returning to smuggling; deportation to Poznan?; pervasive deaths resulting from filth and cold; a prisoner strike, demanding a doctor; slave labor in several sub-camps on railroads, highways, and in an airplane factory; public torture and execution of two captured escapees; transfer to Auschwitz/Birkenau in 1943; his sense he went from "hell to heaven," because he was showered and received clean clothing; liquidation of the Zigeunerlager (Gypsy Lager); reunion with his half-brother (he did not survive); learning his family had been deported (they were all killed); transfer to Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, and Ohrdurf; liberation by United States troops in April 1945; working for an Army captain; obtaining a visa in Frankfurt in 1948; and emigration to the United States. Mr. L. discusses attributing his survival to his desire to know about his family; visiting his home, camps, and his brother's grave in Poland in 1983; and difficulties non-survivors have understanding or believing his wartime experiences.

2 videocassettes