Alexander A. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Alexander A., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1929, one of two children. He recounts his family's move to Otwock; antisemitic harassment; German invasion; moving to the Warsaw ghetto; his father's job as policeman; studying with a private tutor; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; his grandfather's death from starvation; his father placing his sister in a workshop to save her from deportation (he never saw her again); his father removing him and his mother from the Umschlagplatz several times after they had been rounded-up for deportation; his father weeping after round-ups; his father smuggling him to an uncle who was hiding on the Aryan side; his uncle's disappearance; unsuccessful attempts to return to the ghetto (he was captured and escaped several times); a non-Jew in a nearby village sheltering him, giving him a cross, teaching him Christian prayers, and providing Christian papers; walking east toward the Soviet front; a priest in Ostrów Mazowiecka turning him away; living in forests; several escapes from Poles who suspected he was a Jew; working on a farm near Białystok; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to Babruĭsk, then Moscow; imprisonment for two months; transfer to an orphanage for Polish children in Zagorsk; joining an aunt in Uzbekistan; returning to Poland after the war; visiting the man who had assisted him; working for the Joint; visiting a Hashomer kibbutz; and emigration to Israel. Mr. A. notes his non-Jewish appearance and excellent Polish helped him survive, and seldom informing people his father was in the Warsaw ghetto Jewish police.

3 videocassettes