Peretz H. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Peretz H., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1927, the fifth of six children. He recounts harassment as the only Jew in his public school class; his oldest brother's military draft in 1938; German invasion; learning his brother was taken as a Soviet prisoner of war; another brother leaving to find him; anti-Jewish abuse and restrictions; ghettoization; his father's death from starvation; his older two brothers escaping; smuggling food into the ghetto with his younger brother Zalman; escaping to live as non-Jews; singing Polish songs for food and money; several escapes from Poles who suspected they were Jews; receiving assistance from Poles (some knew they were Jews, others did not); Zalman re-entering the ghetto to obtain goods to sell, and being caught in the uprising; Zalman escaping and rejoining him; brief employment as a night watchman, which provided a place to stay; taking food to a hidden Jew; selling cigarettes with other street children; obtaining false papers through the Jewish underground; registering as Poles; arrest for making an anti-German joke; and release the next day.

9 videocassettes