Sam S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Sam S., who was born in 1924 in Dubienka, Poland. He recounts his father's death when he was two months old; his mother's remarriage; attending cheder, then public school; antisemitic harassment; attending a rabbinical seminary in Warsaw; his stepfather's philanthropy; participation in Betar; brief Soviet invasion in 1939; German occupation; working as a secretary for the Judenrat; deportation of his parents and many relatives (they were killed in Sobibor); exemption as a Judenrat employee; obtaining an exemption for an aunt and her children (he claimed they were his wife and children); stealing Polish papers; distributing them to his uncle and others; escaping to Chełm; assistance from a Polish friend in Mielec; returning to Chełm; round-up as a Pole for forced labor; train transfer to Lublin, then Halle; working in a chemical factory; asking for a transfer due to Poles suspecting he was Jewish; working in a sugar factory in Dessau; aligning himself with Czech workers; constant fear of discovery; being injured in an Allied bombing in 1944; hospitalization; liberation by United States troops; posing as a Belgian POW; repatriation to Belgium; assistance from the Jewish community; learning an aunt and uncle had survived; obtaining a passport in his real name from the Polish embassy; emigration to the United States; and bringing his aunt, uncle and cousins later. Mr. S. discusses sharing some of his experiences with his children; his sense of guilt; and the irreplaceable loss of the murdered Jews of Europe.

1 videocassette