Eleazar Z. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Eleazar Z., who was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1925, one of four brothers. He recalls attending gymnasium; one brother's death; participating in clandestine communist organizations; Soviet occupation in 1940; Lithuanian violence and killing of Jews prior to German invasion on June 24, 1941; mass killings in surrounding former forts; ghettoization in August; his father's death in January 1942 resulting from a German beating; forced labor; joining a Jewish underground movement led by Haim Yelin; connecting with partisans outside the ghetto; public hangings; organizing escapes of arrested partisans; forming schools; connections with YIVO; burying documents; escaping to join partisans in the forests in 1943; fighting with Soviet forces against retreating Germans; learning his immediate family had all been killed; working as an archivist for thirty-three years from summer 1944 (he completed his studies in Vilnius and Moscow); marriage to a survivor; his daughter's emigration to Israel in 1973; and joining her in 1988. Mr. Z. recounts many names of Kovno Jews and specific episodes. He shows photographs and documents.

4 videocassettes