Arie T. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3771)

Videotape testimony of Arie T., who was born in Švenčionėliai, Poland (presently Lithuania) in 1926, the youngest of three brothers. He recounts attending Yiddish school; anti-Jewish violence; Soviet occupation; his brothers' fleeing to the Soviet Union; German invasion; his father's murder in a mass killing; round-up with his mother, aunt, and uncle to the Polygon; his mother pushing him to join another child being taken away (everyone else was killed in a mass shooting); living with relatives in the Švenčionys ghetto; a visit by Abba Kovner; contact with Yitzhak Arad; transfer to the Kovno ghetto, then the Vilna ghetto with assistance from Moshe Gordin, head of the Švenčionys Judenrat; non-Jews hiding him and two cousins; returning to the ghetto; living in an orphanage; transfer to Vivikoni; slave labor repairing train tracks; frequent beatings; transfer by ship from Tallinn to Stutthof; prisoners throwing kapos overboard; friends helping him recover from beatings; transfer to Buchenwald in late 1944; hospitalization; joining a Polish prisoner group to escape selection; returning to the Jewish barracks; hiding in a sewer during selections; joining Polish non-Jewish prisoners upon emerging; liberation by United States troops; working as a translator for the Soviets; participating in arrests of SS; brief imprisonment for suspected collaboration; traveling to Vilnius; a cousin informing him of one brother's death and warning him to flee; joining a Deror kibbutz in Vilna; finding his other brother in Łódź; moving to Eschwege displaced persons camp; emigration to Israel in 1949; marriage; and the birth of twins. Mr. T. describes visiting Vilnius; helping to organize monuments at the Polygon and where his father had been killed; and nightmares resulting from his experience. He shows photographs.