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Milton S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-502) interviewed by Sylvia Abrams,

Oral History | Fortunoff Collection ID: HVT-502

Videotape testimony of Milton S., who was born in Dęblin, Poland in 1918, one of eight children. He recounts his family's poverty and orthodoxy; antisemitic violence in public school; leaving school to work as a painter; one sister's emigration to France in 1934; leaving home to work in Warsaw; sending money home; visiting on Jewish holidays; compulsory registration for military service; German invasion; digging fortifications for the Polish army; arrest by the Polish military; escaping when German troops arrived; walking to Ryki; locating his family; bombings; capture by Germans; slave labor as a painter in Puławy; digging graves for dead soldiers; transfer to Dęblin; escape; hiding in his parents' attic for a few days; daily forced labor; transfer to the Dęblin labor camp, then to Częstochowa in June 1944; slave labor in a steel factory; transfer to Buchenwald, then to other camps, including Flossenbürg; return to Buchenwald; accepting that he was going to die; transfer to Dachau; train transport; liberation by United States troops; hospitalization in Wolfratshausen; living in Wolfratshausen, then Landsberg displaced persons camps; teaching in an ORT school; and emigration to the United States in 1950. Mr. S. discusses treatment by a Jewish doctor in a camp hospital; praying with others in camp on Yom Kippur; deportations of his parents and siblings (he never saw them again); fellow prisoners giving him their bread before they died; and the importance of luck to his survival. He shows photographs and documents.

Author/Creator
S., Milton, 1918-
Published
Cleveland, Ohio : National Council of Jewish Women, Holocaust Archive Project, 1984
Interview Date
August 13, 1984.
Locale
Poland
Dęblin (Warsaw, Poland)
Warsaw (Poland)
Ryki (Lublin, Poland)
Puławy (Poland)
Wolfratshausen (Germany)
Language
English
Copies
4 copies: 3/4 in. master; Betacam SP restoration master; Betacam SP restoration submaster; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
Cite As
Milton S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-502). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.