Itzchak H. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Itzchak H., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1929, the sixth of seven children. He recounts his family's Hasidism; attending cheder and public school; his family's Zionism; his mother' death in 1938; German invasion; ghettoization; living with his younger sister in a children's home starting in June 1940; a Zionist leader, Shalom K., giving them hope; returning with his sister to his family in October 1942; obtaining food for his family; many deaths from hunger and disease; being slapped by Mordecai Rumkowski, head of the ghetto, when asking for food for his brother; his brother's hospitalization (he was deported and killed); his older sister's death; brief hospitalization for typhus; deportation with his brother, sister, and father to Auschwitz/Birkenau in August 1944; separation from his sister and father; observing prisoners praying with tefilin; assistance from a doctor; his brother's transfer; living in the Zigeunerlager (Gypsy Lager) with Shalom K. from the orphanage; hiding during selections; smuggling himself into a transport to Braunschweig with a cousin and Shalom K.; slave labor in a truck factory; a public hanging; a march to Watenstedt two months later; train transfer to Ravensbrück, then Wöbbelin; abandonment by the Germans; liberation by United States troops; walking to Neustadt; transfer to several locations by U.S. troops; hospitalization in Lübeck; transfer by the Red Cross to Trelleborg, Sweden; Shalom K. joining his group; forming a kibbutz; obtaining permits to emigrate to Palestine; emigration there in 1946 via Stockholm, Helsingborg, Calais, and Marseille; meeting his future wife en route; living on a kibbutz; military service in the Israel-Arab War; joining a group to establish a new kibbutz; and marriage. Mr. H. sings songs from the ghetto and the Zionist youth group.

7 videocassettes