Ben L. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Ben L., who was born in Vilna, Poland (presently Vilnius, Lithuania) in 1928, the youngest of three children. He recounts attending a Hebrew-speaking school and a Tarbut school; the arrival of many Polish refugees after the onset of war; delivering food to some of the refugees, including Menachem Begin; Soviet occupation; his brother's participation in the Irgun; his father's non-Jewish associate encouraging them to flee; hiding in the associate's cellar outside Vilna for a few weeks; returning home; fleeing with his family to his paternal grandparents' home in Belarus; his sister's return to Vilna; smuggling himself into the ghetto for visits; his mother's return to the ghetto, while his father remained hiding in the forest; leaving with his sister and her boyfriend to join his brother in the partisans (his parents remained in the ghetto); learning his brother had been killed prior to their arrival; the arrival of Abba Kovner and his group; serving as a courier between partisan units; the arrival of Soviet troops; fighting Germans in the streets; learning his parents had been beaten to death by Poles after the war when returning to Vilna from hiding in a forest; leaving to emigrate to Israel per Kovner's decision; traveling to Lida, Chernivt︠s︡i, then Odesa; imprisonment by Soviet authorities for several months; traveling to Milan; joining an Irgun group; transfer to Naples; and emigration to Israel in May 1948, then to the United States in 1967. Mr. L. shows photographs.

1 videocassette