Manus D. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3322) interviewed by Nathan Beyrak and Levana Frank,

Videotape testimony of Manus D., who was born near Katowice, Poland, in 1921, the fourth of five children. He recounts his family's move to Katowice in 1932; their affluence; attending a Jewish school; fights with non-Jews; participating in a Zionist youth group; attending a lecture by Jabotinsky and Zionist summer camp; he, his parents, and younger sister joining his brother in Warsaw in late August 1939; meeting Janusz Korczak; German invasion; he, his parents, and younger sister joining relatives in Sosnowiec; establishing an agricultural commune in cooperation with the Judenrat and its head, Moshe Merin; learning his brother in Warsaw had been killed by the Germans in 1940; deportations in spring 1942; arrest with his mother in June; Merin obtaining his release; his mother's deportation (he never saw her again); another brother's death; sending anonymous letters to Germans warning them of the war's futility; obtaining weapons and making bombs; assistance from a Viennese businessman; producing false papers; his sister volunteering for labor in Germany as a non-Jew; visits from resistance leaders from other cities, including Mordecai Anielewicz, and Eliezer Geller; his resistance group being hidden by a German factory owner during a round-up; ghettoization; building bunkers; his father's capture (he did not return); being wounded; and escaping with a friend.
Mr. D. recounts living as a non-Jew in Chęciny; obtaining documents as a Polish volunteer laborer; traveling to Katowice, then Vienna with twenty others; working in Rauchenwarth; moving to Vienna fearing denouncement; arrest as a suspected thief; transfer to Maria Lanzendorf; an unsuccessful escape attempt; solitary confinement and beatings; release to work in a hospital in Graz because his false documents indicated he had medical training; learning to perform autopsies; traveling illegally to Budapest in January 1944; reunion with his brother and other Zionist underground members; obtaining weapons and false papers; moving as a group to Mohács; German invasion in March 1944; being sent to Cluj to smuggle Jews to Arad; arrest in Hungary as Polish workers; escape from a train during an Allied bombing; capture; imprisonment in Budapest, then Sátoraljaújhely; his release; returning to Budapest; meetings with Joel Brand and Rudolf Kasztner; liberation by Soviet troops; moving to Bucharest; and joining his sister and brother in Israel in 1949. Mr. D. discusses details and people involved in the ghetto administration and the resistance and relations among the Zionist groups.