Arkadii T. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3597) interviewed by Irina Trampolski and Arkadiĭ Shulʹman

Videotape testimony of Arkadii T., who was born in Smilovichi, Belarus in 1928. He recalls a fun-filled childhood, despite poverty; his family's orthodoxy; German invasion in 1941; his father's arrest (he was killed in a mass shooting); hiding during a round-up; watching his family leave their house; hearing constant shooting as the Jews were killed, including his mother, sister, and grandparents; local police participation in the killings; traveling to the Minsk ghetto; smuggling food; forced labor in a neighboring village; a German solider warning him of impending round-ups; leaving the ghetto and wandering in villages during the round-ups; joining Shalom Zorin's unit of Jewish partisans in May 1943; escaping an ambush by Polish partisans who were formerly in his detachment (eleven of his colleagues were murdered); fierce fighting with retreating German forces; liberation by Soviet troops; returning to Minsk; joining the Soviet military; reaching Berlin with Soviet forces; returning to Smilovichi; wanting to shoot a former policeman who had aided the Germans (but he had no gun); marriage in 1948; military draft in 1951; the births of three children (his daughter died in 1975); and visiting massacre sites in Smilovichi with his children.