Charles M. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1656) interviewed by Ada Bloom and Janet Brown,

Videotape testimony of Charles M., who was born in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland in 1926. He recalls attending Hebrew and public schools; anti-Semitic incidents; participating in a Bundist children's group; German invasion; ghettoization in October 1939; working in a forced labor camp in 1940, then in a factory near the ghetto; mass shootings, which included his mother and brother; and his father's deportation. Mr. M. recounts deportation in 1942 to Ostrowiec; transport to Birkenau, then Auschwitz, in 1944; the death march to Melk in early 1945; slave labor digging underground bunkers; transfer to Ebensee; liberation by United States troops in early May; traveling to Italy; Zionist training on a farm; moving to the Feldafing displaced persons' camp; being smuggled to Brussels in 1946; living with cousins; working as a tailor; marriage in 1948; and emigration to the United States in 1951. He details conditions in the ghetto and camps and discusses the importance of aggressiveness in obtaining food and optimism to his survival.