Avraham W. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Avraham W., who was born in Radom, Poland in 1925, the second of three children. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; attending cheder and a Jewish high school; German invasion in September 1939; anti-Jewish restrictions; ghettoization in April 1941; round-up when visiting friends in August 1942; slave labor in a factory; escaping; return to the ghetto; learning his family had been deported (none survived); assistance from friends; deciding not to eat bread during Passover; his future wife sending him vegetables; Poles throwing food over the wall; volunteering for deportation to Pionki; slave labor repairing bicycles; encountering an uncle with whom he remained until liberation; praying with his tefillin; public hangings; a month's transfer to Małusy Wielke to dig anti-tank trenches for Organization Todt; transfer to Oranienburg; having to give up his tefillin; fasting and joining a group to pray on Yom Kippur; public hangings; transfer to a factory camp in October 1944; sharing extra food received from a guard; transfer in February 1945 to Rathenow; slave labor in an airplane factory; sharing extra food received from a German civilian worker; abandonment by the guards in late April; leaving with a group; living with a Jewish family in Berlin, then in Neuruppin; traveling to the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp; encountering his future wife; returning to Berlin; working with Beriḥah, smuggling survivors for illegal emigration to Palestine; assistance from the Joint; illegal emigration to Palestine in 1947; marriage; and the births of two children. Mr. W. discusses his continuing faith; the importance of remaining humane and assistance from others to his survival; sharing his experiences with his daughter, but not his son; and nightmares due to his experiences.

9 videocassettes