Boris G. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Boris G., who was born in Skalat, Poland in 1922, one of three brothers. He recounts his mother's death when he was six; living in an orphanage; working for an aunt; Soviet occupation; German invasion in 1941; one brother being killed; fleeing to Kharkiv, then Krasnodar; working on a collective farm; draft into the Soviet army in Rostov; postings in Stalingrad and Beketovka; participating in the battle of Stalingrad; an acquaintanceship with Nikita Khrushchev; commanding several hundred soldiers; interrogating captured Germans; liberating Auschwitz; entering the cathedral in Częstochowa; postings in Dresden and Berlin; transfer back to Auschwitz to arrange transport of non-German collaborators to Krasnovodsk (they perished there); traveling to Kraków; ordering the execution of three Poles threatening to kill Jews; demobilization; living with a cousin in Lʹviv; marriage in 1947; his son's birth in 1949; fleeing to Poland; smuggling his family and savings to Vienna; emigration to Israel via Italy; and then to the United States. Mr. G. mentions returning to Skalat after the war (there was nothing left); his other brother's disappearance; and the importance to his survival of learning to fend for himself at an early age by "using his head."

1 videocassette