Oswald R. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Oswald R., who was born in a Polish village near Żywiec in 1922, the older of two brothers. He recalls learning German; attending a local school; cordial relations with non-Jews; being sent to live with an aunt in Bielsko-Biała to attend a better school; graduating from high school; moving with his family to Żywiec; participating in Akiba; fleeing toward Kraków during the German invasion; his parents returning home (he never saw them again), but sending him and his brother away from German-occupied areas; finding an Akiba group in Lʹviv; his assignment smuggling others to Lithuania with the goal of emigration to Palestine; arrest by the Soviet NKVD; release; traveling to Vilnius; finding an Akiba unit; assistance from the Joint; working as a shoemaker; his brother's emigration to Palestine; Soviet occupation; German invasion; fleeing with Soviet soldiers; returning to Vilnius; arrest; forced labor in a shoe factory; escaping; removing his star; encountering a German soldier who discussed participating in a mass killing of Jews; staying with a Polish farmer for two months; the farmer sending him to hide with relatives in a forest village; bringing food to friends in a nearby labor camp; traveling to the Naliboki Forest; posing as a non-Jew; living briefly in Turėts, working as a school janitor; witnessing the distribution of clothing taken from Jews killed in a mass shooting; translating for the locals when Germans came; and the head of the local police taking him to Mir as a translator.

7 videocassettes