Title
Leon Z. Holocaust testimony (HVT-725) [videorecording] / interviewed by Dori Laub and Diane Fagelman, January 19, 1986.
Summary
Videotape testimony of Leon Z., who was born in Sierpc, Poland in 1924, the oldest of three children. He recounts a close family life; his bar mitzvah; antisemitic harassment; German invasion in 1939; deportation with his family; stopping in Modlin where non-Jewish friends hid them; their return to Sierpc; forced labor; deportation to the Strzegowo ghetto; working on a farm; deportation with his family to Mława, then Birkenau; separation from his mother, sister, and grandparents (they were killed); his father's and uncle's selection for the Sonderkommando; remaining with his brother and cousin; meeting his father and uncle at a fence; receiving food from them; on his father's advice, bringing his brother to the hospital; transfer to a brick layer's school in Auschwitz in winter 1943; his cousin's and friend's castrations in a “hospital”; learning his brother, father, and uncle had been killed; torture after helping the Polish underground; a death march in January 1945; escape; hiding in a forest; assistance from Polish villagers; liberation by Soviet troops; joining the police (no one knew he was Jewish); arresting Nazis; beating German prisoners en route to Sosnowiec; traveling to Katowice; reunion with his cousin; imprisonment as a Nazi spy; release; traveling to Wrocław, then to the Frankfurt displaced persons camp; returning to Sierpc searching for family (he found no one); threats from Poles; traveling to Łódź, then back to Germany; emigration to join relatives in the United States; and marriage. Mr. Z. discusses not losing hope of surviving in camp; difficulties sharing his experiences with his children; and pervasive painful memories. He shows photographs.