Israel R. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2112) interviewed by David Herman

Videotape testimony of Israel R., who was born in Piotrków, Poland in 1927, one of nine children. He recalls attending Polish school and cheder; his family's orthodoxy; German invasion; one older sister leaving for the Soviet Union; his father being rounded-up and beaten; his return and death; ghettoization; forced factory labor outside the ghetto; obtaining extra food for his family; being detained in the factory; learning almost the entire town was deported to Treblinka, including his family; feeling he lived in a ghost town; transfer to Skarżysko; slave labor in a munitions factory; hospitalization; a prisoner warning him of a pending liquidation; leaving despite his health; assistance from the camp doctor; joining a group that fashioning a shofar and prayed; a public hanging; transfer to Buchenwald; improved conditions; slave labor in Schlieben; briefly escaping after a bombing; recapture; a local farmer giving him food; transfer to Theresienstadt; liberation by Soviet troops; being taken to England; learning tailoring; marriage in 1950; and raising his family. Mr. R. discusses learning his older sister had survived in the Soviet Union (she lives in Israel); maintaining his religious beliefs; and the importance of his children and grandchildren. He shows photographs and artifacts.