Yorgan L. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Yorgan L., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1925. He recounts his father serving in World War I; attending Jewish school; anti-Jewish restrictions; his father losing his job; deportation of friends who were Polish citizens; Kristallnacht; participating in Habonim; collecting money for the Jewish National Fund; agricultural training on a kibbutz in Rüdnitz; moving to Paderborn; forced labor; learning his parents had been deported in December 1942; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in March 1943; transfer to Monowitz; slave labor; transfer to the hospital in Auschwitz; working in the kitchen; a public hanging; transfer to Zgoda (Świętochłowice); slave labor in a munitions factory; a death march and train transfer to Mauthausen; transfer to Vienna; Allied bombings; a death march back to Mauthausen; transfer to Gusen; liberation by United States troops; walking to Linz; hospitalization; traveling to Vienna; recuperating from tuberculoses in a sanatorium for a year; training survivors for emigration to Israel in Soriano, Italy in 1947; gathering others from Austria; and emigration to Israel in 1949. Mr. L. discusses the importance to his survival of being with his group; not knowing about the extermination program until after the war; living from day to day in the camps, focusing only on food; learning his entire family had been killed; recent visits to Berlin and Paderborn, including a reunion of his German Zionist work group; and reluctance to share his story, even with his children, until recently.

6 videocassettes