Jakov T. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3644)

Videotape testimony of Jakov T., who was born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia in 1925, the oldest of three children. He recounts participating in Tchelet Lavan; his parents' divorce in 1934; their remarriages; remaining in Ostrava to attend school when his parents and sisters moved; joining his mother in 1938; briefly attending boarding school in Karlovy Vary; joining his mother in Rokycany; joining his father in Prague after Slovak independence and alliance with Germany; his bar mitzvah; registering for a Kindertransport to England, which never left due the outbreak of war on September 1, 1939; briefly living in Poděbrady; anti-Jewish restrictions; attending ʻAliyat ha-noʻar training; his mother's emigration to Palestine; his father's frequent travel; sending packages to deported friends; deportation with his father to Theresienstadt in August 1943; a privileged assignment in the bakery; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau with his father about a month later; assignment to the family camp; friends giving him extra food; his father's involvement with the underground; separation from his father in a selection; transfer to Schwartheide; slave labor rebuilding bombed barracks; transfer to Sachsenhausen; assignment to a factory; hospitalization for an injury; a Czech prisoner doctor caring for him; clearing unexploded bombs; transfer to Lichterfelde, then back to Sachsenhausen; a death march to Parchim; assistance from the Red Cross; abandonment by the guards; liberation by United States troops; working as a translator in Lüneburg; traveling to Hamburg, then Prague; reunion with his sister, stepmother, and uncle; moving to Budapest; a failed attempt to emigrate to Palestine via Romania; traveling to Italy via Szombathely and Graz; assistance from the Jewish brigade; living in refugee camps in Padua, Rome, and Cinecittà; traveling to Santa Maria di Leuca; joining a Habonim kibbutz headed by Israel Gutman; assisting illegal emigration to Palestine; his own emigration by ship; interdiction by the British; incarceration in Cyprus; reunion with his mother in Israel; joining the Haganah, then Palmaḥ; being wounded in the 1948 Arab-Israel war; and discharge in 1949. Mr. T. discusses his father's involvement in anti-Nazi activities and group relations in the camps. He shows letters and photographs.