Ivar S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Ivar S., who was born in Klaipeda, Lithuania, in 1930. He recalls his sheltered life as an only child in a close family; the city's de facto unification with East Prussia in 1939; his family's departure for Lithuania; and several relocations to small towns. He tells of the Soviet and German occupations; moving to Kovno; ghettoization; a German Jewish member of the Judenrat who hid them from round-ups; training as a machinist in an ORT school; and his bar mitzvah in the ghetto in 1943. He describes the ghetto's liquidation; deportation with his parents to Stutthof; separation from his mother; transport to Dachau; separation from his father and placement in a children's block; transport to Auschwitz; forced farm labor with a group of German political prisoners; transport to Buchenwald; and liberation in April 1945. He reflects on postwar life in an OSE orphanage in southern France; hoping in vain to find his parents; emigrating in 1947 to join relatives in the United States; and his sense of bewilderment and terror after separation from his parents.

2 videocassettes (3/4" u-matic)