Roman L. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Roman L., who was born in Ri?ga, Latvia in 1930. He recounts moving to Kaunas with his family when he was four; Soviet occupation in 1941; German invasion in June; a mass killing during which his family was saved by a non-Jew; ghettoization; incarceration with his parents and brother in Kauen-Schanzen; forced labor; receiving extra food from some German guards; transfer with his father and brother to Dachau in 1944; assistance from one kapo; a death march into the Tyrol area; desertion by the guards; liberation by United States troops; hospitalization at Sankt Ottilien; learning his mother had survived; traveling to Berlin, then Paris; emigration to Mexico City; reunion with his mother in 1955 when the Soviets allowed her to leave; and emigration to the United States in 1984. Mr. L. discusses many incidents of camp life; attributing his survival to his father; observing lack of remorse in Germany after the war; becoming a self-made man and an autodidact (his education was interrupted at age eleven); the difficulty of describing his experiences; and having previously erased these experiences for many years.

2 videocassettes