Jonas R. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2080) interviewed by Kathy Strochlic and Bonnie Dwork

Videotape testimony of Jonas R., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1914, one of ten children. He recalls attending public school and yeshiva; helping in his father's bakery; organized resistance to antisemitism; officer training in the Polish Army; mobilization in March 1939; German invasion; capture and incarceration as a POW in Görlitz (Zgorzelec); hospitalization; release; returning to Łódź via Lublin; working as a baker, construction worker, and fireman in the ghetto; collecting and burying the dead; deportation with other family members to Auschwitz in 1944; separation from his parents and sister (he never saw them again); forced labor; transfer with his brother and nephew to Friedland; protecting his nephew during selections; working as a foreman; cold and starvation; liberation with his brother and nephew; finding his future wife in a nearby camp; living in Łódź; marriage; increasing antisemitism; and emigration to Israel in 1948, then later to the United States. Mr. R. notes that three siblings survived and discusses his wife's nightmares; the unwillingness of his American relatives to hear about his experiences; and his daughter's interest in the Holocaust.