Daniel L. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3872)

Videotape testimony of Daniel L., who was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1933, an only child. He recounts his family's affluence; cordial relations with non-Jews; a large and close extended family; attending Jewish school; Soviet occupation; German invasion; ghettoization; his father working in the transport system; telling Germans his parents were out when they hid during round-ups; hiding during the childrens' round-up; capture; escape with his father's help; deportation with his parents to Stutthof; separation from his mother (he never saw her again) when they were sent to Landsberg, then, even more painfully, from his father, when he was sent with other children to Dachau; transfer two weeks later to Auschwitz/Birkenau; slave labor; woman prisoners giving him extra food; a death march, then train transfer to Mauthausen; observing cannibalism; conflicts among ethnic prisoner groups; transfer to Gunskirchen; receiving a Red Cross package; abandonment by the guards; walking with others to Wels; liberation by United States troops; assistance from the Joint; a six-month journey returning to Kaunas; learning his father had been killed; reunion with an uncle; living in an orphanage; being smuggled to Ulm; living in an Agudat Israel home; joining a Gordonyah group; traveling to Marseille; illegal emigration by ship to Palestine in 1947; interdiction by the British; incarceration on Cyprus for six months; choosing to live in a Youth Aliyah home; attending an Ort school; military enlistment; marriage; and the births of four children. Mr. L. discusses reunions with the children's group; a recent trip to Kaunas; a futile attempt to trace his family property; and Youth Aliyah helping him in his murdered family's stead. He shows photographs and documents.