Leon F. Holocaust testimony (HVT-339) interviewed by Marilyn Goodman

Videotape testimony of Leon F., who was born in Poland in 1917, one of eight children. He recalls his large, extended family; their orthodoxy; working with his father as a shoemaker; antisemitic violence; German invasion in 1939; deportation with his father to Radom; his father being buried alive; escape home; a non-Jewish friend smuggling him into the ghetto; their forced relocation to Zwoleń; deportation to Dęblin, then another camp (he never saw his family again); escaping while digging a mass grave; capture; placement in Budzyń; public hangings; a severe beating; transfer to Majdanek in 1943; working as a shoemaker; his supervisor saving him from a mass killing; transfer to Płaszów, briefly to Auschwitz in August 1944, Mauthausen, then St. Valentin; slave labor in a tank factory; a German foreman saving his life and giving him extra food; Allied bombings; transfer to Ebensee; observing cannibalism; liberation by United States troops; six months' hospitalization; living in a displaced persons camp; assistance from the Joint; returning home; a non-Jewish friend protecting him from antisemitic violence; traveling to Łódź; living in Linz displaced persons camp; marriage; the births of two children; illegal emigration to Palestine; fighting in the 1948 Arab-Israel war; and emigration to the United States in 1959 to join his wife's relatives. Mr. F. notes thinking only about death in camps and not believing he would survive; frequent nightmares; and discussing his experiences with his family and other survivors.