Abraham S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-280) interviewed by Frances Ganz

Videotape testimony of Abraham S., who was born in Działoszyce, Poland in 1928 to an orthodox family of seven children. He recalls attending Polish school and cheder; antisemitic harassment; German invasion; two brothers escaping to the Soviet Union; smuggling to support his family; escaping to Wodzisław during the first deportation (his family was taken); returning home; escaping a deportation six weeks later; hiding with Poles in a village, then in Wodzisław; traveling to Radomsko; ghettoization; deportation to Skarżysko in September 1942; obtaining extra food and a better placement through bribes; public hangings; hospitalization for typhus; transfer to Buchenwald in February 1944; improved conditions; pointless slave labor; transfer after two months to Schlieben; slave labor in a munitions factory; transfer to Theresienstadt in April 1945; liberation by Soviet troops in May; traveling to Prague; emigration to Windermere, England in August; learning through the Red Cross that one brother had survived; and emigration in 1949 to join relatives in the United States. Mr. S. notes he never assumed he would survive while in camp; not sharing his experience, even with his children; pride in his Jewish identity; and the inadequacy of any reparation payments.