Allen S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-833) [videorecording] / interviewed by Suzanna Horn and Helen Katz, December 14, 1986 and March 1, 1987.

New Haven, Conn. : Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale, 1986-1987.

2 videorecordings (4 hr. and 2 hr., 50 min.) : col.

English

Videotape testimony of Allen S., who was born in Mikołajow, Poland, in 1929. In these detailed and graphic testimonies, Mr. S. recounts prewar life in Iwje; the rise of Nazism and Polish antisemitism; Soviet occupation; deportation of relatives to Siberia; German invasion; Polish harassment and violence against Jews; Einsatzkommandos killing his father; ghettoization of Iwje; hiding during a mass killing of 2,500, including his mother, in 1942; and forced labor. He recalls escaping; hiding with a neighbor in Mikołajow; joining the partisans; smuggling himself to Iwje to find contraband for the partisans; escaping after the head of the Judenrat refused to give him false papers; anti-Nazi operations by the Stalin Brigade; his commander's rape of two Polish girls and the unit's execution of their family; partisan antisemitism; meeting relatives in the Bielski Brigade; liberation; and his return to Iwje. He describes his depression; alcohol abuse; police work punishing ex-collaborators; being drafted into the Soviet army unit denazifying Soviet POWs near Brest-Litovsk; Soviet antisemitism; transfer to the Polish army to escape to the West; meeting Israelis in Białystok who gave him false papers; reunion with surviving friends and family in the Neufreimann displaced persons camp; emigrating to America in 1947; finding attitudes unchanged as an American soldier in Germany in the 1950s; and his successful career in the fashion industry.

June 01, 2002

Allen S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-833). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Allen S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-833). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)