Max S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-356) interviewed by Donna Yanowitz,

Videotape testimony of Max S., who was born in Drahovo, Czechoslovakia (presently Ukraine) in approximately 1924, one of ten children. He recounts leaving school after eighth grade to work; Hungarian occupation; his father's draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion; local forced labor; his father's return in 1941; deportation with his parents and siblings, except for two sisters, to Kolomyi︠a︡, Horodenka, then Orinin; three weeks incarceration in a factory; removal for slave labor; staying in a ditch during a mass shooting; a Ukrainian woman helping him escape when the shooting was over (his father and brothers were killed); hiding in Orinin; assistance from local Jews; leaving rather than waiting to be killed; working as a non-Jew on a collective farm in Krasnostavtsy; living with a Ukrainian family; a mass killing of Jews in Orinin (his most painful experience); befriending a German soldier; saving his life, which resulted in protected status; illegally traveling with a Ukrainian group to Bohorodchany; capture by a German; killing him; returning to Drahovo; reunion with his mother and sisters; being taken for slave labor; privileged treatment as a foreman; transfer to Uzhok; saving a worker's life; transfer to Sobrance; saving two escapees by beating them, so they were not executed; escaping in Komárom; living with a farmer in Mudroňovo; joining partisans from Yugoslavia; participating in raids; liberation by Soviet troops; returning home; reunion with two sisters; traveling to Eggenfelden displaced persons camp; marriage; and emigration to the United States, with assistance from the Joint, in 1949. Mr. S. notes the importance of luck and self-confidence to his survival; meeting one of the men he saved at a bar mitzvah; ever-present memories; and sharing his experiences with his son.