Philip W. Holocaust testimony (HVT-346) interviewed by Donna Chernin

Videotape testimony of Philip W., who was born in 1922 in Wadowice, Poland, one of four children. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; attending school for two years in Skawina; antisemitic harassment; participating in Zionist organizations; German invasion in 1939; fleeing with his family to Skawina, Kraków, Lubaczów, then Rava-Rusʹka; returning home; anti-Jewish restrictions; three days in prison; deportation to Sosnowiec in April 1941; transfer to Gogolin; slave labor building the Reichsautobahn; receiving packages from his parents for six months; transfer to Gross Masselwitz; praying daily and fasting on Yom Kippur; transfer to Neukirch in May 1942; receiving extra bread from a guard; sharing food with fellow inmates; transfer to Markstädt in May 1943; slave labor for Krupp; privileged work in a smithy; transfer to Fünfteichen; a death march to Gross-Rosen in January 1945; transfer to Dora/Nordhausen a week later; escaping during an Allied bombing; hiding with five others; liberation by United States troops; living in Nordhausen, Allendorf, and Fulda displaced persons camps; assistance from UNRRA; living in Marburg; and emigration to the United States via Frankfurt in July 1949. Mr. W. discusses focusing only on hunger in the camps; giving up once; public hangings of captured escapees; the loss of over a hundred relatives in the Holocaust; recurrent nightmares; and attributing his survival to luck. He shows documents and photographs.