Yehoshua R. Holocaust testimony (HVT-1838) [videorecording] / interviewed by Anita Tarsi and Iris Berlatsky, June 30, 1988.

Ramat Aviv, Israel : Beth Hatefutsoth, Nahum Goldman Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, 1988.

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

Hebrew

This testimony is in Hebrew.

Videotape testimony of Yehoshua R., who was born in 1923, one of ten children. He recalls his family's orthodoxy; attending a yeshiva; German invasion of Jaworzno; forced labor; moving to Chrzanów to support his sister and her eight children; being sent from a round-up to Bunzlau; slave labor there and in several other camps ending at Klettendorf; escaping with a friend; being caught on a train; incarceration in Myslowitz, then Birkenau; assignment to the Sonderkommando; moving corpses from the gas chambers to open pyres; public hangings; losing his faith (he later returned to orthodoxy due to his wife); wanting to survive in order to tell others what he witnessed; having extra food and clothing from the murdered prisoners; one camp underground group organizing an uprising; the failed revolt; evacuation in January 1945; escaping almost immediately; being sheltered by non-Jews; returning to his home town; antisemitic threats; deciding to emigrate to Palestine; and assistance from the Joint.

June 01, 2002

Yehoshua R. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1838). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Yehoshua R. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1838). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)