Chaim O. Holocaust testimony (HVT-2375) [videorecording] / interviewed by David Herman and Elliot Perry, January 10, 1991.

London, England : British Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1991.

1 videorecording (2 hr., 23 min.) : col.

English

Videotape testimony of Chaim O., who was born in Sosnowiec, Poland, one of six children. He recalls attending Polish school and cheder; antisemitic violence; participating in No'ar ha-Tsiyoni; he and his siblings spending summers with their grandmother in Miechów Charsznica; German invasion; briefly fleeing to Charsznica, then returning in late winter; forced labor locally; one sister being taken to Kraków; a round-up in fall 1942; a mass killing; transfer to a field near Słomniki; a child's birth; selection with his father and brother for transfer to Płaszów; their escape to Charsznica; his father arranging for them to hide with a Pole; being caught (the others succeeded in hiding); incarceration in the Miechów ghetto, then Płaszów; slave labor with cousins; a Kol Nidrei service; hospitalization for typhus; transfer to Skarżysko; working with picric acid for several months; starvation; a public hanging; transfer to Buchenwald, then Schlieben; slave labor in a HASAG munitions factory; a brief prisoner strike; a rabbi reciting Neilah on Yom Kippur; transfer to Theresienstadt; sharing stolen food with a friend; liberation by Soviet troops; hospitalization; losing his memory of events from May to July; transfer to Windermere, England via Prague; learning his sister had survived; nightmares; transfer to Glasgow; studying dentistry; locating his sister in Israel; learning his family in hiding was killed in December 1944, but his brother survived; visiting them in Israel in 1953; marriage in London; serving in the British military in Germany; and raising four children. Mr. O. discusses camp life; Windermere's healing effect; sharing his experiences with his children; retaining his faith and religiosity; and a recent trip to Poland with his sons.

June 01, 2002

Chaim O. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2375). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Chaim O. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2375). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)