Roman L. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1259) interviewed by Hedy Rutman and Tina Rauch

Videotape testimony of Roman L., who was born in Rīga, Latvia in 1930. He recounts moving to Kaunas with his family when he was four; Soviet occupation in 1941; German invasion in June; a mass killing during which his family was saved by a non-Jew; ghettoization; incarceration with his parents and brother in Kauen-Schanzen; forced labor; receiving extra food from some German guards; transfer with his father and brother to Dachau in 1944; assistance from one kapo; a death march into the Tyrol area; desertion by the guards; liberation by United States troops; hospitalization at Sankt Ottilien; learning his mother had survived; traveling to Berlin, then Paris; emigration to Mexico City; reunion with his mother in 1955 when the Soviets allowed her to leave; and emigration to the United States in 1984. Mr. L. discusses many incidents of camp life; attributing his survival to his father; observing lack of remorse in Germany after the war; becoming a self-made man and an autodidact (his education was interrupted at age eleven); the difficulty of describing his experiences; and having previously erased these experiences for many years.