- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Shlomo V., who was born in Yahilʹnytsya, Poland (presently Ukraine), in approximately 1927, the oldest of three children. He recounts completing public school; briefly joining Gordonia (he was not a Zionist); attending university in Lʹviv; antisemitic harassment, particularly by Endecja members; Soviet occupation; German invasion in 1941; fleeing east; staying with an uncle in Zolochiv; Germans and Ukrainians forcing him and other Jews to bury hundreds of those killed by the retreating Soviets; Germans shooting the burial workers; escaping from the pit at night with four others; hiding in his uncle's cellar; working for farmers in Voronyaki, posing as a non-Jew; returning to Yahilʹnytsya; arrest; a severe beating; escaping at night; re-arrest; his father obtaining his release through non-Jewish business connections; working for the Judenrat; transfer to the tobacco factory his father managed; making false papers; round-ups, deportations, and mass killings; living in the factory with his family as aranged by the German factory manager who, with his mistress, protected them from deportations; visiting the Yahilʹnytsya camp; obtaining a gun from a guard; his family escaping a round-up through the sewers; his escape to the forest; their return; hiding his mother, sister, and cousin during a round-up, then escaping with his father and brother into the sewers; and all of them returning with assistance from the manager.
Mr. V. recalls moving with his family to a village in winter 1944 as Soviet troops approached; returning to their house; moving to Chortkiv in March; hiding with Polish neighbors when Germans returned; Soviet liberation; draft into the Soviet military; showing his Jewish commander the mass grave site in Zolochiv; assignments in Lʹviv, Rzeszów, and Kraków; demobilization; business trips to Prague and Bratislava; testifying to obtain the release of a German who had saved his family; leaving Poland after a Polish riot and killing of Jews in Kraków; living in Steyr and Braunau displaced persons camps; his family's arrival; joining a group organizing illegal emigration to Palestine, funded by the Joint; and emigrating to Israel in 1948. Mr. V. discusses Israeli contempt for survivors; obtaining recognition by Yad Vashem for the factory manager who saved them; and testifying at three war crime trials in Germany. He shows documents, the knife he had used to escape, and a model he built of the mass killing site in Zolochiv.
- Author/Creator
- V., Shlomo, 1927?-
- Published
- Tel Aviv, Israel : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1991
- Interview Date
- June 24, 1991.
- Locale
- Germany
Soviet Union
Israel
Poland
Yahilʹnytsya (Ukraine)
Lʹviv (Ukraine)
Zolochiv (Lʹvivsʹka oblastʹ, Ukraine)
Voroni︠a︡ky (Ukraine)
Chortkiv (Ukraine)
Rzeszów (Poland)
Kraków (Poland)
Bratislava (Slovakia)
Prague (Czech Republic)
- Cite As
- Shlomo V. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3328). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Jadaio, Rachel, interviewer.
Iwanir, Sarah, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in Hebrew.
