Lev A. Holocaust testimony (HVT-805) interviewed by Mark Jacobs and Burton Einspruch,

Videotape testimony of Lev A., who was born in Mönchengladbach, Germany in approximately 1910. He recounts his family moving to Jelgava (his father's hometown); evacuation by the Russians to Voronezh during World War I; cello lessons; his father's arrest during the Soviet Revolution; his return a year later; anti-Jewish violence; moving to Rīga; attending law school in Berlin; playing in a quartet; pursuing a career as a cellist in Paris; performing in many European cities; returning to Rīga in 1933; becoming the principal cellist with the Liepāja Philharmonic; Soviet occupation; German invasion; ghettoization with his family in Rīga; forced factory labor; his parents' disappearance (he never saw them again); transfer by boat to Stutthof via Gdańsk; slave labor hauling wood and loading coal; memorizing pieces of music; encountering his sister once (she did not survive); volunteering as a welder; transfer to a shipyard; the German foreman giving him extra food, despite the fact that he knew he was not a welder; an Italian POW teaching him to weld; brief hospitalization (his foreman sent medicine); a very brief transfer to Buchenwald, then back to the shipyard; transfer to Lauenburg; liberation by Soviet troops; incarceration for a year in a Soviet prison camp as a spy; escaping; living in a displaced persons camp; and emigration to the United States. Mr. A. notes writing songs in concentration and displaced persons camps; becoming numb to death helping him survive; and his postwar career as a cellist with the Dallas Symphony. He sings a song from Stutthof.