Chaim S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1636) interviewed by Laure Gutman and Anita Auerhan

Videotape testimony of Chaim S., who was born in Łomża, Poland in 1922. He recalls that his father edited a Yiddish weekly; his youngest brother's death in the German bombing on September 1, 1939; being caught in a round-up; release through the intervention of a non-Jewish family friend; Soviet occupation two weeks later; traveling to Vilna to rejoin his yeshiva; fleeing to Kovno to avoid deportation to Siberia; returning to Vilna on June 22, 1941, the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union; boarding a train with Soviet officers' dependents; a brief arrest in Smolensk as a spy; working on a collective farm near Kuībyshev (now Samara); and being drafted. Mr. S. recounts traveling to Guzar to join the Polish army; his rejection due to antisemitism; working in Kzyl-Orda; becoming a Soviet citizen; and being arrested.