Itzhak D. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Itzhak D., who was born in Vilna, Russia (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1916, one of five children. He recounts participating in Hashomer Hatzair with Abba Kovner; Soviet occupation; working with the writer Szmerke Kaczerginski; German invasion; anti-Jewish violence; ghettoization; hiding during round-ups; forced labor in a military fuel depot outside the ghetto; selling stolen fuel to purchase food; escaping; hiding with a German guard who had befriended him in the fuel depot; sneaking back into the ghetto; hiding with his family during the liquidation; capture; transfer to a Gestapo prison; slave labor clearing trees with his father; observing mass graves; being forced to disinter corpses in Ponary for burning; the trauma of finding the bodies of his mother, sister, and friend; a group effort to build a tunnel; escaping through the tunnel; assistance from local villagers; and joining a Soviet partisan group.

3 videocassettes