Videotape testimony of Aharon C., who was born in Opoczno, Poland in 1921, one of seven children. He recounts attending cheder, public school, then Tarbut school; participating in Gordonyah; antisemitic violence; his older brother's emigration to Palestine in 1935; two brothers' conscription; German invasion; one brother's return; anti-Jewish restrictions; Germans taking community leaders for ransom, including his father; the community paying the ransom; his father's appointment to the Judenrat; ghettoization; working in the family bakery; volunteering in a soup kitchen; his assignment to bury corpses from a killing; hiding with his brother and uncle during a round-up; capture by Poles; securing their release with a bribe; hiding in a cemetery (a Polish friend brought him food); returning to his parents in the ghetto; transfer with his family to the Ujazd ghetto; escaping from a deportation train with encouragement from his father; Poles offering him shelter, then robbing him; traveling to Warsaw; returning to Opoczno to retrieve buried money to purchase false papers; assistance from Polish family friends; returning to Warsaw; obtaining false papers; arrest; interrogation and beating by the Gestapo; transfer to the ghetto; forced labor sorting Jewish belongings; escaping; hiding with a Jewish family; contact with Eliezer Geller; joining the Jewish resistance (ZOB); arms training; and participating in missions, including arresting collaborators.

Mr. C. recalls the ghetto uprising; escaping with a group through the sewers to a forest; David Nowodworski organizing them; obtaining supplies from friendly Poles; other ghetto fighters joining them; receiving weapons from the Polish Communist Party (PPR); moving to another forest; joining Armia Ludova partisans; skirmishes with the right wing Armia Krajowa (AK); a Soviet air drop of weapons and supplies; blowing up German trains; his unit's dissolution; many casualties from German attacks; liberation by Soviet troops; interrogating German POWs; joining the Soviet militia in Mińsk Mazowiecki; guarding Jewish refugees; traveling with the Soviet Army to Praga; returning to Mińsk Mazowiecki; meeting Abba Kovner in Lublin; interrogating AK members; traveling to Warsaw; meetings with Yitzhak Zuckerman and Marek Edelman; discussions of revenge; returning to Mińsk Mazowiecki; marriage; briefly returning to Opoczno; joining a group emigrating to Palestine; receiving documents as Greek Jews; traveling through Poland to Slovakia, then boarding a Red Cross train to Romania; living three months each in a kibbutz in Alba Iulia, then Bucharest; illegal emigration by ship from Constanța to Palestine; interdiction by the British; release; reunion with his brother; his wife's uncle hosting a Jewish wedding by a rabbi for them; working as a baker; being drafted into the Haganah; and serving in the 1948 Arab-Israel War and 1956 Sinai Campaign. Mr. C. provides many details of his experiences. He shows photographs.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) > Personal narratives.

World War, 1939-1945 > Personal narratives, Jewish.

Jews > Poland > Opoczno.

Jews > Poland > Ujazd (Województwo Świętokrzyskie)

Jews > Poland > Warsaw.

World War, 1939-1945 > Prisoners and prisons, German.

World War, 1939-1945 > Underground movements > Poland.

World War, 1939-1945 > Jewish resistance.

Warsaw (Poland) > History > Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, 1943.

Palestine > Emigration and immigration.