Alexander B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Alexander B., who was born in Vilna, Russia (presently Vilnius, Lithuania), in 1916. He recounts his friendship with Abraham Sutzkever; studying art; German invasion; fleeing east with his wife; German troops overtaking them; traveling back to Vilnius for nine months via Lyubashevo, Svirʹ and other villages; witnessing round-ups of local Jews; entering the Vilna ghetto; helping to smuggle food into the ghetto; joining an uncle in Švenčionys; ghettoization; working as a shoemaker, and a translator for the Judenrat; transfer back to the Vilna ghetto when the Švenčionys ghetto was liquidated; joining the Fareyniḳṭe parṭizaner organizatsye (FPO); meetings with Yitzhak Wittenberg and Abba Kovner; escaping with Moshe Shutan to join partisans in the Naroch forest; forming a Jewish unit, Nekama (Vengeance) under Soviet General Fydor Markov; Markov sending him with Yitzhak Arad and Yashike Gertman to bring more fighters from the ghetto; meetings with Kovner, Abraham Chwojnik, Chyena Borowska, Sonia Madeysker, and Judenrat officials Jakob Gens and Salk Dessler; discussions of rationales for escaping to the forest or remaining in the ghetto to fight; and bringing others to the forest, including his wife.

9 videocassettes