Herman L. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3127) interviewed by Barbara Hadley Katz and Dana L. Kline,
Videotape testimony of Herman L., who was born in Thessalonikē, Greece in 1926. He recounts his family's long history in Salonika; Jewish life; German invasion in 1941; anti-Jewish restrictions; fleeing with his friends to Drama; their arrest attempting to cross the Turkish border; frequent torture during six months in a Gestapo jail in Belgrade; transfer by train to a Greek jail in Thessalonikē in March 1943; assistance from a Greek friend; deportation to Birkenau in August 1943; his assigned job carrying corpses; transfer to Warsaw after the ghetto revolt in August 1943; mass killings during a death march from Warsaw to Dachau in July 1944; a Sephardic rabbi blessing them before their transfer to Waldlager; sabotaging production of concrete blocks; and liberation by United States troops on April 29, 1944. Mr. L. describes returning to Salonika from Feldafing; marriage in 1946; his daughter's birth; being drafted into the Greek army in 1947; fighting in Albania; and antisemitic laws in postwar Greece. He reflects on the importance of friendship to his survival; complex relations between inmates from different countries; his Sephardic background; the disadvantage of speaking neither Polish nor German in the camps; and his attachment to a diary he found in the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto.
- Published
- New Haven, Conn. : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1995
- Interview Date
- June 20, 1995.
- Locale
- Greece
Thessalonikē (Greece)
Belgrade (Serbia)
Drama (Greece) - Language
-
English
- Copies
- 3 copies: Betacam SP master; 3/4 in. dub; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
- Cite As
- Herman L. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3127). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
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View in Yale University Library Catalog: http://hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/1097605
Record last modified: 2018-05-30 11:44:00
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/hvt1097605