Moshe M. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4002)

Videotape testimony of Moshe M., who was born in Ladmir, Poland (presently Volodymyr-Volynsʹkyĭ, Ukraine) in 1927, the third of four children. He recalls his family's poverty; attending public school and cheder; his father's membership in a Hasidic synagogue; antisemitic harassment; Soviet occupation; improved economic conditions; German invasion in June 1941; reporting for forced labor in place of his brother; round-up; his mother offering to take his place to be killed (they were both released); ghettoization; obtaining extra food for his family when working at German headquarters and from a Polish non-Jew, who informed him about partisans; building a hiding place with neighbors; hiding with his family and others for ten days during a mass killing; discovery by Germans; separation with his brother from his parents and sisters; escaping; returning to the hiding place; being found and escaping twice more; entering the small remaining ghetto when the mass killing was over; the non-Jewish Pole advising him to escape; hiding with seven others at a farm, then in the forest; two of their group “disappearing”; briefly joining Polish partisans; Soviet partisans guiding them to liberated Rivne; returning home to search for relatives (none survived); traveling to Lublin, then to Germany with a group emigrating to Palestine; living in Landsberg displaced persons camp; joining Betar; illegal emigration by ship in 1947; interdiction by the British; return to Germany; legal emigration in May 1948; immediate draft for the Arab-Israel War; depression resulting from the loss of his entire family; marriage in 1953; and the births of three children. Mr. M. notes not sharing his experiences with his children until his daughter overheard him discussing his story with her friend.