Avraham K. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3639)

Videotape testimony of Avraham B., who was born in Tykocin, Poland in 1926, one of six children. He recounts attending cheder, then yeshiva; increasing antisemitism; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; brief German invasion, then Soviet occupation; attending a Soviet school; visiting Białystok; German invasion; round-up with his family; his father sending him home; hiding with a friend; hearing the mass shooting of all the Jews while escaping to the forest; assistance from a non-Jewish neighbor; traveling to his grandparents' in Knyszyn; a round-up nine months later; escaping with his aunt and others to Jasionówka; deportation by cattle car in December 1942; jumping from the train; entering the Białystok ghetto; living with relatives; hiding during round-ups; hospitalization; forced labor outside the ghetto; smuggling food to his relatives; the ghetto uprising; deportation to Lublin, then Bliżyn; slave labor in a quarry; friends sharing extra food; transfer to Auschwitz/Birkenau; public hangings; transfer to Buna/Monowitz, then a munitions factory in Sosnowiec; a death march to Gleiwitz; train transfer to Mauthausen; Allied bombings causing many deaths; observing cannibalism; another march to Gunskirchen; receiving Red Cross packages; liberation by United States troops; transfer to Wels displaced persons camp; traveling to Budapest; learning of violence against Jews in his home town; living in Salzburg, Badgastein, and Windsheim displaced persons camp; marriage; his son's birth; emigration to Israel in 1949; and the births of two more children. Mr. B. discusses the importance of being with friends to his survival; conflicts between prisoner groups; sharing his experiences with his children; and visiting Tykocin in 1988.