Yeshayahu L. Holocaust testimony (HVT-4158)

Videotape testimony of Yeshayahu L., who was born in Ciechanów, Poland in 1928, one of six children. He recounts his family's poverty; attending public school; many relatives emigrating to Palestine; visiting family in Mława; brief hospitalization in Warsaw; antisemitic harassment; German invasion; his father and two brothers fleeing east; their return; one brother's successful flight to the Soviet Union; ghettoization; public executions; his bar mitzvah; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau; separation from his family; useless slave labor; a supervisor giving him extra food and an easier work assignment; seeing his father at night (he was later selected); becoming an electrician assistant; visits with his brother; his prisoner group trading with civilian workers; assignment as a German officer's servant; the death march to Mauthausen; transfer to Melk three weeks later; slave labor underground; transfer to Ebensee; abandonment by German guards; liberation by United States troops; being moved to an orphanage in Milan by the Jewish Brigade; living with his group in Magenta and Cervino; illegal emigration by ship to Palestine in 1945; interdiction by the British; incarceration in ʻAtlit; release; reunion with his two surviving brothers; marriage; and the births of five children. Mr. L. discusses relations between prisoner groups; and his fear, humiliation, and loss of hope in concentration camps. He shows photographs.