Abraham L. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Abraham L., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1920. He recounts his father's scholarship; his family's focus on education; rabbinical ordination at age nineteen; German invasion in 1939; ghettoization; slave labor; a Jewish engineer giving him a desk job; his father's selection in 1942 (he never saw him again); his mother's hospitalization; his sister clandestinely retrieving their mother; deportation with his mother and siblings to Auschwitz in 1944; separation from his sister and mother; transfer with his brother ten days later to Altenhammer; his brother sharing food from his privileged kitchen job; an SS beating resulting in permanent loss of vision in one eye; transfer to Dora in January 1945; slave labor building tunnels; public hangings; transfer to Bergen-Belsen in April; liberation by British troops; Russian prisoners killing Germans for revenge; living in the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp for three months; moving with his brother to Hannover; working as a reporter; pressing charges against his landlord for antisemitism; organizing cultural events for the Jewish community including a lecture by Leo Baeck; marriage to a survivor; and reporting on the Nuremburg trials. Mr. L. discusses Hermann Göring's testimony; earning his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago; and visiting Poland with his wife in 1974.
Extent and Medium
3 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
- L., Abraham, -- 1920-
- Baeck, Leo, -- 1873-1956.
- Göring, Hermann, -- 1893-1946.
Corporate Bodies
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- Dora (Concentration camp)
- Bergen-Belsen (Concentration camp)
- DP-Camp Bergen-Belsen.
Subjects
- Antisemitism -- Postwar.
- Brothers.
- Forced labor.
- War crime trials -- Germany.
- Revenge.
- Mutual aid.
- Nuremberg Trial of Major German War Criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, 1945-1946.
- Postwar effects.
- Postwar experiences.
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Men.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Atrocities.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Jews -- Poland -- Łódź.
- Jewish ghettos.
Places
- Łódź ghetto.
- Altenhammer (Germany : Concentration camp)
- Poland.
- Łódź (Poland)
- Nuremberg (Germany)
- Hannover (Germany)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat