Julius O. Holocaust testimony (HVT-894) interviewed by Lilian Sicular and Sergio Rothstein,

Videotape testimony of Julius O., who was born in Schwarzenborn, Germany in 1923. He recalls hostility toward Jews after 1933; attending public school until 1937; a carpentry apprenticeship in Kassel; repairing roads in Schwarzenborn after Kristallnacht; attending a Jewish trade school in Frankfurt; and factory work from 1940 to October 1941 in Frankfurt. He describes joining his family in Kassel when they received notice of deportation in November 1941; their transport to Rīga; his transfer to Salaspils; brutal beatings and killings of prisoners; work as a carpenter; repairing SS officers' villas in Rīga in May 1942; rejoining his family in fall 1942 in the Rīga ghetto; his younger brother's bar mitzvah; serving in the ghetto police after the previous police had all been shot; and working in an SS hospital, where he stole food. Mr. O. tells of transfer to Kaiserwald in August 1944; his parents' and younger brother's selection; transport to Stutthof two weeks later, then to Buchenwald; posing as a political prisoner; escape attempts; transport to Terezín; liberation by Soviet troops; finding his brother and sister in Kassel; and emigration to the United States in 1947. Mr. O. shows pictures and certificates from Schwarzenborn, Rīga and Terezín.