Haim B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Haim B., who was born in approximately 1923, one of five children. Mr. B. recounts his family's affluence; living in Vilnius; visiting his grandfather in Valozhyn; participating in Hashomer Hadati; Soviet invasion; brief Lithuanian independence, followed by Soviet reoccupation; attending university; his father's arrest for "illegal trading"; helping secure his release; managing his father's factory in Kaunas; German invasion; one sister's death in a bombing; anti-Jewish restrictions; thousands of Jews disappearing; learning they were killed at Paneriai; reporting for daily forced labor; organization of the Judenrat; ghettoization; escaping with his brother and aunt from a round-up by Lithuanian collaborators; their former non-Jewish maid bringing them food; forced labor collecting valuables from apartments of Jews killed or deported; hiding during round-ups; observing a German sadistically killing an infant, resulting in his fear of holding an infant to this day; his father bribing a Jewish policeman to release his grandmother from a round-up; public hangings; working in a warehouse; trading goods for food for his family; observing Soviet prisoners of war who were in worse condition than the Jews; continuing to study Torah with a rabbi; working for the Judenrat; his grandmother's deportation; joining a cell of the Fareynik?t?e part?izaner organizatsye (FPO), a Jewish resistance group; attending theater performances and cafes to forget what was happening around him; obtaining a pistol so he could escape and join partisans outside the ghetto; his father joining a group building a bunker; and joining partisans outside the ghetto in September 1943. Mr. B. discusses Jacob Gens' role in the ghetto; Joseph Glazman's leadership of the FPO while on the Judenrat; and only he and one sister surviving.

24 videocassettes