Peter M. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Peter M., who was born in Cherkasy, Ukraine in 1917. He recalls family observances of Jewish holidays; attending Jewish school; working with his father as a carpenter after 1933; enlisting in the Soviet army in 1939; two years of communications training in Russia; military actions in Belarus in 1941; defending Z︠H︡lobin for a month; retreating; fleeing with a friend; returning home in October; learning his parents were evacuated and his brother drafted (he never saw them again) from a Ukrainian neighbor who provided food and helped him escape; living in Novoye Zhittya, posing as a Ukrainian violin player; observing a Jewish woman raving about her children being killed in a mass shooting nearby; farm work for three months; fleeing to Orzhitsa; repairing a violin and building coffins; being warned by an official of his imminent arrest; hiding in villages including Chaykovshchina and Orzhitsa; hiding with a teacher; writing and distributing anti-German leaflets; joining the Soviet army in Chernobay; marriage after the war; learning all his relatives were killed; and the births of a son and daughter. He notes assistance from many non-Jews while hiding, and his daughter's emigration to Israel.

2 videocassettes