Summary
Videotape testimony of Chaim H., who was born in Vatra Dornei, Romania, in 1924, one of three brothers. He recounts attending public and Hebrew school; participating in Zionist youth groups; antisemitic harassment; his mother's death; being sent to live with an uncle in Chernivt︠s︡i; moving to a Zionist agricultural training community; their expulsion and move to Bucharest; Iron Guard violence against Jews; arrest, beatings, then release; moving to Goleț; returning home; deportation with his family in October 1941 to Mohyliv-Podilʹsʹkyĭ via Ataki; transfer to Sledy; slave labor on farms; smuggling food to the Mogilev ghetto; returning to the ghetto; his father's death in December 1942; his brothers' emigration to Palestine; deportation to Tulʹchyn in April 1943; slave labor in a brick factory; assistance from friends when he had typhus; returning to the Mogilev ghetto; a Zionist group meeting every night (they meet often to the present); working with Yitsḥaḳ Artsi organizing orphans; liberation by partisans, then Soviet troops in March 1944; draft into the Soviet military; assignment to work battalions in Smolensk, then Vitsebsk; guarding German POWs; transfer to Polatsk, then Rīga; his superior, a Russian Jew whose family had been killed, shooting Germans for revenge; serving in Kaliningrad, Klaipėda, Daugavpils, and Warsaw; demobilization; returning to Chernivt︠s︡i; searching for relatives (they had been killed); traveling to Bucharest; reunion with Hechalutz members; living in Rădăuți; working as a Zionist representative in Bukovina; organizing illegal emigration to Palestine in Brașov; illegal emigration to Palestine in 1946; marriage to a survivor in 1947; joining the Haganah, then Palmaḥ; serving in the Israel-Arab war; and the births of two children. Mr. H. discusses sharing his experiences with his daughter and Israelis' lack of interest in his experiences until recently.