Lewis S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Lewis S., who was born in Horst, Germany in 1921. He recalls his family had lived in that town hundreds of years; leaving school in 1935 because of antisemitism; a painter's apprenticeship from 1936 to 1938; Kristallnacht; his parents sending his two younger sisters on a Kindertransport to Holland; and deportation with his parents to the Ri?ga ghetto in January 1942. Mr. S. recounts forced labor for Organisation Todt and the SS; working outside the ghetto; smuggling food for his parents; meeting his future wife; transfer with his father to Stutthof, then Buchenwald; encountering British and American prisoners of war there; volunteering to transfer to Bochum, near Horst; working in a Krupp munitions factory; a German worker who helped them contact a friend and plan their escape; escape in March 1944; hiding with their friend, then with the friend's brother in Essen; and liberation in April 1945. He describes locating his sisters; learning his mother had died three weeks after liberation; and marriage in 1945. Mr. S. details life in the ghetto and concentration camps; notes the importance of luck to his survival; and tells of testifying at a war crime trial in Du?sseldorf.

2 videocassettes