David P. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3626)

Videotape testimony of David P., who was born in Šiauliai, Lithuania in 1924. He recalls attending a Hebrew gymnasium; participating in a Socialist-Zionist youth group; Soviet occupation; transformation of his school from Hebrew to Yiddish; joining a clandestine Zionist group; German invasion in 1941; fleeing east with his family; capture by Lithuanians; imprisonment in Šiauliai; separation from his family; forced labor digging ditches, which he later learned were mass graves where his father was killed; release; ghettoization; living with his mother and sister; working in a factory; brief hospitalization; horrific responses to round-ups when family members were taken; a public hanging; separation from his family when he was deported to Dachau; transfer to Utting; a local German giving him food; sleeping next to and sharing food with a former neighbor; transfer back to Dachau; a death march; liberation by United States troops; hospitalization; reunion with his mother and sister (they later joined his aunt in Paris); living in a displaced persons camp; becoming a leader of a group of orphans with his future wife; their illegal emigration with the orphans to Palestine; interdiction by the British; and brief internment on Cyprus. Mr. P. discusses a recent trip to Lithuania with his son.