Ben S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1344) [videorecording] / interviewed by Barbara McPherson and Robert Moses Shapiro, May 14, 1989.

Baltimore, Md. : Baltimore Jewish Council, 1989.

1 videorecording (1 hr., 46 min.) : col.

English

Videotape testimony of Ben S. who was born in Ozeryany, Poland (now Ukraine) in 1920. One of nine children, he describes poverty in the shtetl; attending cheder where his father taught; the family's move to Goloby when he was eleven; attending yeshiva in Lutsk from 1933 to 1937; returning home to teach when his father became ill; increasing antisemitism; participation in Zionist youth groups to prepare for kibbutz life; Soviet occupation in 1939; and many refugees fleeing from German occupation. Mr. S. recounts the German invasion; fleeing east with three friends to Kiev; working on a collective farm near Stalingrad (now Volgograd) for two months; fleeing the German advance to Tashkent, hoping to reach Palestine via Iran; work on a collective in Kazakhstan; recovering from typhus; and enlisting in the Soviet Army. He describes returning home at the end of the war; learning his family and almost all other Jews had been killed; marriage in 1945; escape to a displaced persons camp in Munich; and emigration to the United States in 1947, instead of Palestine, because of the British blockade.

June 01, 2002

Ben S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1344). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Ben S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1344). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)