Shlomo P. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1064) interviewed by Dina Choshen and Raya Adler

Videotape testimony of Shlomo P., who was born in Peine, Germany in 1925. He recalls cordial relations with non-Jews until 1933; expulsion from school after the Nuremberg laws; the family's move to Łódź in 1936; German invasion; fleeing to the Soviet Union with one brother; their separation; placement in an orphanage in Hrodna; draft into the Soviet military; capture by Germans in 1941; identifying himself as a Volksdeutsche while waiting in line to be shot in a mass killing; working as a translator/interrogator for the German 12th Armored Division; interrogating Stalin's son, Iakob Juġas̆vili; advancing toward Moscow, then Leningrad; sexual assault by an officer; friendship with him; revealing he was Jewish; the officer saving his life during the siege of Leningrad; the officers's death at Schlisselʹburg; transfer from Tallinn to Berlin, then a Hitler-Jugend school in Braunschweig; a parade in his honor; antisemitic Nazi propaganda in the curricula; constant fear of discovery; supportive friendship with a friend's mother, whom he told he was Jewish; visiting the Łódź ghetto on vacation in 1943, hoping to see his family (he did not); military conscription in 1944; liberation by United States troops; returning to Braunschweig; ending his double life; and reunion with his brothers. Mr. P. discusses his identity confusion and conflicted loyalty while posing as a German and recurrent nightmares.