Bernard E. Holocaust testimony (HVT-289) interviewed by Gabriele Schiff and Miriam Forman

Videotape testimony of Bernard E., who was born in Berlin, Germany in 1925. He recounts his father's World War I service; his family's prosperous business; attending public school; restrictions in the 1930s which eased in 1936 during the Olympics; his father's deportation to Zba̜szyń; Crystal Night; his bar mitzvah in December 1938 and his father's letter to him then; his father's return in July 1939; and the family's move to Sambor in August. Mr. E. relates the outbreak of war; Russian occupation; German invasion on June 22, 1941; and mass murders of Jews immediately following. He describes being hidden by a Polish woman in her attic from which he and his father witnessed Jews digging their own graves; ghettoization; repairing bicycles for the Germans which supported his family; hiding with others during a round-up; their discovery; separation from his mother, siblings and family whom he never saw again; his father's assignment to another work detail and subsequent death; and transfers to Drohobych, Płaszów, Auschwitz, Mauthausen, and Linz, where he was liberated by Americans in May 1945. He recalls transfer to Sweden for recovery; and returning to Germany in 1967 to testify at a war crimes trial. In this unusually detailed testimony Mr. E. reflects upon the brutalities he witnessed and his hopes and doubts that the world might learn something.