- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Leon W., who was born into a middle income family in Łódź, Poland, in 1925. Mr. W. recalls his happy childhood, widespread denial in the wake of the outbreak of the war; and the formation of the Łódź ghetto. He vividly describes conditions in the ghetto: forced labor, the harrowing effects of intense hunger, the deterioration of interpersonal relationships, selections, and infanticide. He tells of his arrest in May, 1944; his transfer to Częstochowa, where he worked in an airplane factory; his evacuation from that camp at the end of 1944 to Buchenwald and from there to work in a factory in nearby Sonneberg; the death march in April, 1945; and the joylessness of his liberation. Mr. W. also reflects on his sense that he now leads a double existence; his growing obsession with the past; his immediate postwar return to Poland in a futile search for his family; and nightmares in the postwar period.
- Author/Creator
- W., Leon, 1925-2013.
- Published
- New Haven, Conn. : Holocaust Survivors Film Project, 1979
- Interview Date
- May 2, 1979.
- Locale
- Poland
Łódź
Łódź (Poland)
- Cite As
- Leon W. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Vlock, Laurel, interviewer.
Laub, Dori, interviewer.
- Notes
-
Unpublished finding aid available in repository; 1/2 in. VHS is linked to finding aid by time coding.
Additional documents and photographs on a DVD are available in the respository.
