Moshe K. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Moshe K., who was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1931, the older of two brothers. He recounts attending school; visiting relatives in Vilnius; Soviet occupation; attending a Yiddish school; German invasion in 1941; fleeing east; returning weeks later; ghettoization; attending a clandestine school; becoming religious; his bar mitzvah; hiding during round-ups; digging a bunker with his brother; round-up in July 1944 (his brother was killed in the bunker); deportation with his parents to Stutthof; transfer with his father to Landsberg; transfer with a group of children to Dachau; Ze'ev G., an older boy, volunteering to accompany them; Ze'ev organizing them, to which he attributes their survival; bonding with other religious boys; praying frequently; transfer to Birkenau six days later; selections; transfer to Dora; slave labor at a forge; a French prisoner giving him extra food; a death march and train transfer to Buchenwald; hiding to avoid evacuation; liberation by United States troops; hospitalization; transfer by the Red Cross to a tuberculosis sanatorium in Switzerland; learning his mother had survived, but his father had not; attending school in Zug; legal emigration to Palestine via Marseille; becoming less religious; falsifying his age to enlist in the military; discharge in 1950; marriage; his son's birth; and his mother's arrival in 1955. Mr. K. discusses constant fear in the camps; his sense of homelessness after the war; a troubled relationship with his mother; and difficulty differentiating true memories. He shows photographs, documents, and texts he wrote during and immediately after the war.
Extent and Medium
6 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony is open with permission.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- K., Moshe, -- 1931-
Corporate Bodies
- Stutthof (Concentration camp)
- Landsberg (Concentration camp)
- Dachau (Concentration camp)
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
- Dora (Concentration camp)
- Buchenwald (Concentration camp)
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
Subjects
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- Bar mitzvah.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- Men.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Video tapes.
- Friendship.
- Concentration camp inmates -- Religious life.
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Faith.
- Jewish ghettos.
- Jews -- Lithuania -- Kaunas.
- Forced labor.
- Fathers and sons.
- Child survivors.
- Death marches.
- Soviet occupation.
- Hiding.
- Mutual aid.
- Bunkers.
- Postwar effects.
- Postwar experiences.
Places
- Lithuania.
- Vilnius (Lithuania)
- Kaunas (Lithuania)
- Marseille (France)
- Zug (Switzerland)
- Kovno ghetto.
- Palestine -- Emigration and immigration.
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat