Joseph K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-866) interviewed by Laure Gutman and Estelle Kandel

Videotape testimony of Joseph K., who was born in Włocławek, Poland in 1922. He recalls German occupation in 1939; ghettoization; extreme overcrowding and hunger; community efforts to feed the children and maintain their dignity; public hanging of a man who tried to bring food into the ghetto; and burning of the synagogue while Poles desecrated the Torah. Mr. K. recounts forced labor in Kolmar and Usch; deportation to Birkenau in 1941 where he stayed briefly; transfer to Jawarzno; slave labor building an electric plant and in coal mines; a failed escape by twenty-six prisoners; their exhortation to resist and survive as they were hung; a forced march to Blechhammer in January 1945; and escaping as Germans tossed grenades at them. He describes a Soviet officer protecting them; returning to his town to seek surviving family; learning no one had survived; residing in Linz, Austria; marriage and birth of a daughter; emigration to the United States in 1953; and his recent decision to give testimony to counteract Holocaust denial. He shows a Yizkor book from his hometown.