Zvi Z. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Zvi Z., who was born in a village in Czechoslovakia in 1928, the fourth of eight children. He recalls everyone was Orthodox; attending cheder and public school; antisemitic harassment; Hungarian occupation in 1938; the draft of two older brothers into slave labor battalions (he never saw them again); ghettoization in Vynohradiv in 1944; deportation to Auschwitz; separation with his father and brother from his mother and younger siblings (he never saw them again); transfer with his father and brother to Warsaw; slave labor clearing the former ghetto; trading salvaged valuables to Poles for food; the followers of the Klausenburger Rebbe, Jekuthiel Judah Halberstam, trading food so he could remain kosher; many praying while working; a death march and train transfer to Dachau, then Kaufering, in October; slave labor burying bodies in mass graves, construction, and in a factory; his father's transfer (he never saw him again); a futile escape attempt; liberation by United States troops; his brother's hospitalization; returning home via Plzeň and Prague; reunion with cousins in Vynohradiv; returning to Prague; reunion with his brother; placement in an orphanage; Israeli representatives sending him for aviation training in Lieberec; and emigration to Israel. Mr. Z. discusses never losing hope of surviving in camps; the importance of his faith despite becoming less religious; and not sharing his experiences with his son until recently.

5 videocassettes