- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Nisan R., who was born in Katerynoslav, Ukraine (presently Dnipropetrovsʹk) in 1918, the youngest of seven children. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; moving to Davyd-Haradok, then Pinsk; attending religious school, then Polish gymnasium; a Hasidic rabbi officiating at his bar mitzvah; participating in a Zionist youth group; Soviet occupation; traveling with his youth group to Vilnius; assistance from the Joint and Hadassah; establishing a training farm; trying to establish routes for emigration to Palestine; Soviet invasion; his mother's visit; German invasion; ghettoization; cleaning German offices; “stealing” permits to distribute to Zionists and forge false papers; marriage; representing No'ar ha-Tsiyoni in the formation of a united resistance organization (FPO) of all the Zionist groups; obtaining weapons for the FPO with approval from Jacob Gens, head of the Judenrat; assistance from non-Jews, including a German officer, Anton Schmidt; Yiżḣak Wittenberg's surrender; armed resistance when the liquidation of the ghetto was imminent; a joint decision to organize escapes to join partisans; his escape with his wife to the Naroch forest; blowing up trains; killing collaborators and Germans (his form of revenge); antisemitic violence by non-Jewish partisans; and liberation by Soviet troops.
Mr. R. recalls returning to Vilnius; traveling to Pinsk, then Rivne; learning his entire family had been murdered; participating in the organization of illegal emigration to Palestine; returning to Vilnius; fleeing from the NKVD to Lida; organizing refugees in Lublin, Kraków, Warsaw, and Humenné; traveling to Bucharest, then to Treviso via Budapest and Austria, with assistance from the Jewish Brigade; organizing kibbutzim; assistance from the Joint; participating in a Zionist conference in Paris in 1946, where he met Abba Hillel Silver; his daughter's birth in Rome; illegal emigration to Palestine in 1947; fighting in the Israeli independence war; capture by Egyptian troops; imprisonment in Gaza; mistreatment by Egyptian guards; release six months later; his second daughter's birth; representing Israel in Argentina from 1951-1953; leaving their kibbutz to continue his education; and his wife's death. Mr. R. discusses many of the leaders of the FPO and partisans; his relationships with them; relationships among a variety of organizations including Nekamah and Voroshilov; his criticism of Yitzhak Zuckerman's book about Jewish resistance; visiting Vilnius in the 1980s; and not sharing his experiences with his children.
- Author/Creator
- R., Nisan, 1918-
- Published
- Tel Aviv, Israel : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1990
- Interview Date
- December 11, 1990.
- Locale
- Lithunania
Poland
Lithuania
Vilnius
Dnipropetrovsʹk (Ukraine)
Davyd-Haradok (Belarus)
Pinsk (Belarus)
Vilnius (Lithuania)
Rivne (Rivnensʹka oblastʹ, Ukraine)
Lida (Belarus)
Humenné (Slovakia)
Kraków (Poland)
Lublin (Poland)
Paris (France)
Bucharest (Romania)
Budapest (Hungary)
Treviso (Italy)
Rome
Austria
Palestine
Argentina
- Other Authors/Editors
- Amit, Yoram, interviewer.
Pasalski, Maia, interviewer.
- Notes
-
Associated material: Nisan R. Holocaust testimony [friend} (HVT-3193), Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
This testimony is in Hebrew.
