Y. Abraham Z. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2379) interviewed by David Herman and Elliot Perry

Videotape testimony of Y. Abraham Z., who was born in Płock, Poland in 1925. He recounts antisemitic harassment; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; German invasion; escaping to G̨abin; returning home; confiscation of his father's business; ghettoization; smuggling food; his father's election to the Judenrat; deportation to Działdowo, then Suchedniów; his grandfather's death; escaping with his father; railroad work with non-Jewish Poles; friends calling from a passing train that his mother was aboard (it went to Treblinka); separation from the non-Jews; a forced march to Szydłowiec; transfer to Skarżysko; reunion with his sister; slave labor in a munitions factory; assistance from friends when he was ill; working with his sister; beatings for smuggling food; public shooting of escapees; separation from his father and sister during transfer to Buchenwald in fall 1944; receiving extra food from French POWs; transfer to Schlieben; reunion with his father; a Dutch prisoner doctor treating his infected hand; Allied bombings; transfer to Theresienstadt; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to Poland; separation from his father; returning to Theresienstadt; registering for emigration to England; returning to Poland to find his father; his father encouraging his return to Theresienstadt; emigration to Windermere; meeting his English aunt; his father's death in a car accident in Germany in 1948; learning his sister had survived; their reunion (she emigrated to the United States); and marriage to his cousin. Mr. Z. discusses the importance to his survival of focusing on the moment; taking chances for extra food; and his powerlessness to help friends and family as they died in front of him.