Abe L. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Abe L., who was born in a small town near Vilna, Poland in 1925. He recalls poverty in the shtetl; attending Yeshiva for one year; prohibitions against Jewish land ownership in the late 1930s; schooling from 1939-1941 under Soviet occupation; arrival of German troops in July 1941; immediate killing of Jews; imposition of forced labor; round-ups of Jews from surrounding areas; living in ghettos in Kozyany and Szarkowzczyzna; and mass killings (including two nephews), carried out by local Lithuanians and White Russians, beginning in spring 1942. He describes the formation of partisan units in surrounding forests, in which his brothers participated; making shoes for the German army in the Glubokoye ghetto; having to hide when a letter from partisans to his family was intercepted by Germans; escape to the forest with the rest of his family, with help from a Polish man, in August 1943; partisan military movements in which he could not participate because of his youth; and liberation by Soviet troops in July 1944. Mr. L. reflects upon his pervasive memories of the Holocaust and their increase over time.

2 videocassettes