Chaim L. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Chaim L., who was born in 1921, the youngest of three children. He recounts his middle-class family in Wieluń, Poland; arrest in 1937 for fighting with non-Jews; German invasion; fleeing to Łódź; returning home; ghettoization; forced labor; deportation in August 1941 (he never saw his family again); slave labor building roads in Loebau, Żabikowo, Kreising, and another camp; receiving letters and packages from home; transfer to Kreuzsee in spring 1941, then Eberswalde; working in a munitions factory with POWs; transfer to Auschwitz/Birkenau eighteen months later; reunion with a brother-in-law (he was killed); transfer to Buna/Monowitz; slave labor; public hangings; fellow prisoners helping him when he was ill; falling five stories; hospitalization; a German doctor helping him avoid selection; a death march to Gleiwitz; train transfer to Buchenwald, then Zwieberge; Allied bombings en route; slave labor digging tunnels; another death march; escape, recapture, and escape again; assistance from local Germans; and liberation by United States troops. Mr. L. details many episodes of camp life and emphasizes that starving humans cannot think of anything but food.

5 videocassettes