Uziel L. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3192)

Videotape testimony of Uziel L., who was born in Żuromin, Poland in 1916, the youngest of three children. He recalls his family's affluence; his father's leadership role in the Jewish community; attending Jewish and public schools; moving with his family to Łódź in 1929; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; his sisters' emigration to Palestine in 1934 and 1935; training as a textile engineer; supporting his parents; his leadership role in Noʻar ha-Tsiyoni; enlistment in the Polish military in 1938; attending officers' training school; German invasion; capture; imprisonment in Stalag II A; a Red Cross visit; forced labor assignments; transfer to Stuttgart, then Lublin concentration camps; escaping with a friend; returning home using his military documents, which did not indicate he was Jewish; his father urging him to leave the ghetto; Mordecai Rumkowski trying to convince him to remain; escaping to Warsaw in March 1940; establishing a Zionist farm in Grochów; good relations with the Polish police and resistance; orders to enter the Warsaw ghetto in fall 1940; living in a kibbutz; assistance from the Joint establishing a public kitchen; escaping to Bratislava to develop a route for others in Noʻar ha-Tsiyoni to emigrate to Palestine; joining with Maccabi organizing Zionist youth; his future wife's arrival from Poland; their escape to Budapest; conflict with other Zionists; obtaining false papers; futile attempts to return to Slovakia; their six-week imprisonment; transfer to a center for illegal immigrants; release as Poles; returning to Budapest; imprisonment and release; draft into a Hungarian slave labor battalion; his wife's emigration to Palestine; several transfers; release as a Polish non-Jew; emigration to Palestine via Istanbul; accompanying Golda Meir to public talks on the European situation; and advising Moshe Sneh and Eliyahu Golumb, heads of the Haganah, not to send parachutists to Europe. Mr. L. notes he did not learn of the mass murders of Jews until he left Europe.