Mark M. Holocaust testimony (HVT-496) interviewed by Sylvia Abrams

Videotape testimony of Mark M., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in approximately 1922, one of ten children. He recounts his parents' orthodoxy; attending school; working in his brother's commercial art studio; attending Betar meetings; participating in Maccabi; family vacations in Otwock; German invasion; his mother and brother being killed by German bombs; using identification papers of a non-Jewish friend who was killed; fleeing east; arrest on the Soviet border; brief imprisonment in Novosibirisk; deportation to a labor camp in Siberia; a brief reunion with his sister; transfer to Sumy; joining the Polish section of the Soviet army; attending officer training school; fighting in many places as the forces moved west; entering Majdanek after liberation; observing piles of burnt corpses; executions of German camp officials; transfer to Warsaw; visiting his sister in Łódź; deserting and traveling illegally to Berlin; recruitment by the Haganah in Munich; traveling to Marseille; illegal emigration by boat to Palestine; interdiction by the British; incarceration on Cyprus for one year; release; marriage in 1948; serving in the Israeli army; and emigration to the United States in 1954 with assistance from his brother. He shows photographs and examples of his commercial artwork.