- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Michael I., who was born in 1917, one of seven children. He recalls his family's business in Warsaw and Falencia; attending yeshiva until age fourteen; participating in Akiba; becoming head of the Otwock branch; antisemitic violence; living on training farms (hachsharah) in Bełchatów and Siemiatycze; German invasion; fleeing to Ostrołęka, then Łomża; returning to his family in Otwock; fleeing to Soviet-occupied territory; traveling to Vilnius via Białystok and Hrodna; working at a hachsharah in Garliava; living in Kaunas; German invasion; fleeing to Ukmergė; posing as a non-Jew; returning to Kaunas, then Garliava; ghettoization in Kaunas; forced labor; assisting in organizing the resistance with Chaim Yellin; Itka Grinberg, head of the Jewish police, assisting him avoid deportation; arrest when traveling to Garliava; incarceration in the Ninth Fort; escaping with a group back to the ghetto; the Jewish police hiding the escapees in a bunker; Yellin, Grinberg, and Elkhanan Elkes, head of the Judenrat, meeting with them; joining an organized escape in trucks; joining a partisan group in a forest; killing collaborators for revenge; enlisting in the Soviet army; a Jewish general befriending him; returning to Kaunas; attending Rosh ha-Shanah and Yom Kippur services; volunteering for the police in Vilnius as a non-Jew; escaping en route to an assignment in Warsaw; joining groups planning illegal emigration to Palestine; Hashomer Hatzair assigning him to take children from Lublin to Bratislava to Vienna; assistance from the Joint; marriage in the Wels displaced persons camp; a circuitous route to Marseille; illegal emigration to Palestine; interdiction by the British; incarceration in Cyprus; transfer to a hospital in Israel when he was ill; and eventually living in a kibbutz. Mr. I. names many people when discussing details of specific events.
- Author/Creator
- I., Michael, 1917-
- Published
- Ramat Aviv, Israel : Beth Hatefutsoth, Nahum Goldman Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, 1986
- Interview Date
- April 7, April 17, May 20, and June 30, 1986.
- Locale
- Lithuania
Kaunas
Belarus
Warsaw (Poland)
Falenica (Warsaw, Poland)
Otwock (Poland)
Bełchatów (Poland)
Siemiatycze (Poland)
Ostrołęka (Województwo Mazowieckie, Poland)
Łomża (Poland)
Białystok (Poland)
Hrodna (Belarus)
Vilnius (Lithuania)
Kaunas (Lithuania)
Ukmergė (Lithuania)
Garliava (Lithuania)
Lublin (Poland)
Bratislava (Slovakia)
Vienna (Austria)
Marseille (France)
Palestine
Cyprus
- Cite As
- Michael I. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1817). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Dobkin, Amit, interviewer.
Choshen, Dina, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in Hebrew.
