Baruch S. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Baruch S., who was born in Vilna, Poland (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1924, one of four children. He recalls his family's roots in Vilna; attending cheder and a Lubavitch synagogue, where his father was cantor; attending a Jewish gymnasium; preparing for his bar mitzvah for a year (he gave several readings and talks due to his father's position); transfer to a Polish gymnasium; attending summer camp where Abba Kovner lectured; Soviet occupation, then Lithuanian control in 1939; return to Soviet control in 1940; enrolling in a technical school; German invasion; his father's job cleaning German headquarters; his job in a German car repair shop; his father's arrest; his mother bribing officials to obtain his release; burying valuables and giving some to their Polish servant; ghettoization; thinking a friend crazy when he related a mass killing at Ponary from which he escaped; a round-up on Yom Kippur, 1941; his parents sending him and his sister to Radashkovichy, hoping they would survive; repairing German military vehicles with Soviet prisoners of war in an Organization Todt garage; escaping to the garage during a mass killing in March 1942; a Soviet POW hiding him; ghettoization with the few remaining Jews; his mother arranging his return to Vilna; purchasing a gun; leaving his family during a round-up to join the partisans; and participating in an attack on Germans. Mr. S. notes visiting Vilnius two years ago, as well as the mass grave in Radashkovichy where his sister is buried.

21 videocassettes