Leon H. Holocaust testimony (HVT-628) interviewed by Muriel Weisel and Esther Feigenbaum

Videotape testimony of Leon H., who was born in Łódź, Poland, in 1919. Mr. H. tells of prewar antisemitism; becoming a carpenter like his father and brothers; his family's move to the Łódź ghetto in 1940; starvation; a German soldier who refused to believe that Jews could be tradesmen; witnessing atrocities while doing carpentry at the local Gestapo headquarters; his mother's death after a beating; and surrendering to join his father and siblings when they were rounded-up. He details conditions on the deportation train; separation from his father and sister at Auschwitz; selection and transport with his brothers to Görlitz; his younger brother's murder; forced labor in an armaments factory; beatings; digging trenches; his older brother's death during a forced march; leaving camp after it was abandoned; incarceration in the Görlitz jail; liberation by Soviet troops while on a death march; returning to Poland to seek surviving relatives; and reunion with his sister in Regensburg displaced persons camp. His testimony is suffused with the anger, bitterness, and psychological torment he has suffered as a result of his loss.