Yaakov B. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Yaakov B., who was born in Hrubieszów, Poland in 1926, the youngest of three children. He recounts his brother's death from pneumonia; attending a Jewish school; compulsory transfer to a public school; antisemitic harassment; working in his father's business from age fourteen; German, then brief Soviet occupation; traveling with his father to an uncle in Volodymyret︠s︡ʹ; their return home; German occupation; ghettoization; forced labor; deportation with his family to Sobibór in spring 1942; separation from his mother and sister; slave labor with his father cutting trees and cleaning box cars; trying to protect his father when he had typhus; German officials killing his father; killings as reprisals for escape attempts and for "sport"; public hangings; slave labor constructing barracks; a planned uprising and escape headed by Alexander Pechersky, a former Soviet soldier; escaping during the uprising in October 1943; living in the forest for four months; encountering other escapees in Iwanki; assistance from local villagers; Jewish partisans refusing to accept them; working for a Polish farmer; joining a Soviet partisan unit; raiding villages and blowing up railroads; battles with Germans; encountering a partisan group that included Ukrainians who had been guards in Sobibór; and discharge from the partisans.

8 videocassettes