Leon Z. Holocaust testimony (HVT-725) interviewed by Dori Laub and Diane Fagelman,

Videotape testimony of Leon Z., who was born in Sierpc, Poland in 1924, the oldest of three children. He recounts a close family life; his bar mitzvah; antisemitic harassment; German invasion in 1939; deportation with his family; stopping in Modlin where non-Jewish friends hid them; their return to Sierpc; forced labor; deportation to the Strzegowo ghetto; working on a farm; deportation with his family to Mława, then Birkenau; separation from his mother, sister, and grandparents (they were killed); his father's and uncle's selection for the Sonderkommando; remaining with his brother and cousin; meeting his father and uncle at a fence; receiving food from them; on his father's advice, bringing his brother to the hospital; transfer to a brick layer's school in Auschwitz in winter 1943; his cousin's and friend's castrations in a “hospital”; learning his brother, father, and uncle had been killed; torture after helping the Polish underground; a death march in January 1945; escape; hiding in a forest; assistance from Polish villagers; liberation by Soviet troops; joining the police (no one knew he was Jewish); arresting Nazis; beating German prisoners en route to Sosnowiec; traveling to Katowice; reunion with his cousin; imprisonment as a Nazi spy; release; traveling to Wrocław, then to the Frankfurt displaced persons camp; returning to Sierpc searching for family (he found no one); threats from Poles; traveling to Łódź, then back to Germany; emigration to join relatives in the United States; and marriage. Mr. Z. discusses not losing hope of surviving in camp; difficulties sharing his experiences with his children; and pervasive painful memories. He shows photographs.