- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Moshe M., who was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1922, the third of four children. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; attending cheder at age three; completing Jewish trade school in 1938; German invasion in 1939; anti-Jewish restrictions, including confiscation of his father's business; he and his older sister working to support the family; ghettoization; smuggling food; working in a battery factory; volunteering for road building near Łęczna; assistance from a non-Jewish woman; escaping; doing farm work posing as a non-Jew; arrest; incarceration in Lublin; release by a Volksdeutsch guard who had been helped by a Jew; returning to the Warsaw ghetto; hiding with his family during round-ups; his parents' round-up while he was at work; he and his older sister smuggling them out of the Umschlagplatzr; his round-up; assignment to a factory outside the ghetto; visiting his parents; a Pole smuggling letters to him from his brother from which he learned his parents and sisters had been deported; learning his brother had been deported (none survived); several visits to the ghetto; acquiring guns; Polish civilian workers informing them of the ghetto uprising; and deportation to Majdanek.
Mr. M. describes public hangings and beatings; encountering his uncle, aunt, and cousin; slave labor in a quarry; friends supporting him when he was ill; never believing he would survive; transfer to Skarżysko-Kamienna; slave labor in a HASAG munitions factory; hospitalization for typhus; his sister's friend helping obtain a privileged position repairing machinery; receiving extra food from Polish non-Jewish workers; his Polish supervisor saving him from execution; transfer to Radom, Częstochowa, then Meuselwitz in November 1944; slave labor in a HASAG factory; Allied bombings; train evacuation; release in Czechoslovakia; liberation by United States troops; returning to Warsaw via Plzeň and Prague; living with a friend in Siedlce; futilely seeking relatives in Otwock; emigrating with a group to Italy due to pervasive antisemitism; assistance from Beriḥah, UNRRA, and the Joint; illegal emigration to Palestine in 1946; interdiction by the British; incarceration on Cyprus; release; living with his uncle's family in Israel; their kindness; joining the Haganah; and marriage to a survivor. Mr. M. discusses camp hierarchies; the importance of assistance from friends to his survival; hostility to survivors from Israelis; building his family and country as his form of revenge; and recently completing a written record of his experiences that he had started in Italy.
- Author/Creator
- M., Moshe, 1922-
- Published
- Tel Aviv, Israel : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1992
- Interview Date
- June 18 and 25, July 1, 8, and 22, and August 6, 1992.
- Locale
- Poland
Warsaw
Israel
Warsaw (Poland)
Lublin (Poland)
Łęczna (Lublin, Poland)
Plzeň (Czech Republic)
Prague (Czech Republic)
Siedlce (Poland)
Otwock (Poland)
Palestine
Cyprus
- Cite As
- Moshe M. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3369). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in Hebrew.
