Nisim A. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Nisim A., who was born in Bitola, Serbia in 1917, one of five children. He recalls his family's poverty; religious observance; cordial relations with the Macedonians; participating in Tehelet Lavan, a leftist Zionist organization; military service in Maribor; joining a hachsharah in 1935 located on farms in Subotica, elsewhere, and in Sušak; attempting illegal emigration to Palestine in 1940 from Vukovar; being stopped in Kladova; traveling to Belgrade, then to Sušak; hearing he was recalled to the military; serving for six months on the Albanian border; moving to Zagreb; German invasion in April 1941; escaping to Niš; assistance from a Serb; returning to Bitola; finding it was occupied by Bulgarian troops; recruitment to SKOJ; joining the partisans in August 1942; organizing SKOJ units while hiding in local villages; staying with a cousin in Kastoria, Greece; obtaining false papers; joining Greek ELAS partisans; returning to his partisan unit in Macedonia; taking Chetniks prisoners; saving a Jew among them; and battles with Germans and Albanians when they penetrated to Greece. Mr. A. discusses pre-war Jewish live in Bitola; deportation of most of his family to Treblinka; marriage in 1949; his military career; and almost total destruction of the Bitola Jewish community.

3 videocassettes