Shlomo V. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3328) interviewed by Rachel Jadaio and Sarah Iwanir,

Videotape testimony of Shlomo V., who was born in Yahilʹnytsya, Poland (presently Ukraine), in approximately 1927, the oldest of three children. He recounts completing public school; briefly joining Gordonia (he was not a Zionist); attending university in Lʹviv; antisemitic harassment, particularly by Endecja members; Soviet occupation; German invasion in 1941; fleeing east; staying with an uncle in Zolochiv; Germans and Ukrainians forcing him and other Jews to bury hundreds of those killed by the retreating Soviets; Germans shooting the burial workers; escaping from the pit at night with four others; hiding in his uncle's cellar; working for farmers in Voronyaki, posing as a non-Jew; returning to Yahilʹnytsya; arrest; a severe beating; escaping at night; re-arrest; his father obtaining his release through non-Jewish business connections; working for the Judenrat; transfer to the tobacco factory his father managed; making false papers; round-ups, deportations, and mass killings; living in the factory with his family as aranged by the German factory manager who, with his mistress, protected them from deportations; visiting the Yahilʹnytsya camp; obtaining a gun from a guard; his family escaping a round-up through the sewers; his escape to the forest; their return; hiding his mother, sister, and cousin during a round-up, then escaping with his father and brother into the sewers; and all of them returning with assistance from the manager.

Mr. V. recalls moving with his family to a village in winter 1944 as Soviet troops approached; returning to their house; moving to Chortkiv in March; hiding with Polish neighbors when Germans returned; Soviet liberation; draft into the Soviet military; showing his Jewish commander the mass grave site in Zolochiv; assignments in Lʹviv, Rzeszów, and Kraków; demobilization; business trips to Prague and Bratislava; testifying to obtain the release of a German who had saved his family; leaving Poland after a Polish riot and killing of Jews in Kraków; living in Steyr and Braunau displaced persons camps; his family's arrival; joining a group organizing illegal emigration to Palestine, funded by the Joint; and emigrating to Israel in 1948. Mr. V. discusses Israeli contempt for survivors; obtaining recognition by Yad Vashem for the factory manager who saved them; and testifying at three war crime trials in Germany. He shows documents, the knife he had used to escape, and a model he built of the mass killing site in Zolochiv.