Testimony of Raul Teitelbaum, born in Prizren, 1931, regarding his experiences as a child in the partisans and in the Sajmiste and Bergen-Belsen camps

Testimony of Raul Teitelbaum, born in Prizren, 1931, regarding his experiences as a child in the partisans and in the Sajmiste and Bergen-Belsen camps His was the only Jewish family in Prizren, in the Kosovo region, where his father was the regional doctor; the entry of the Germans in April 1941 and the annexation of the area to Albania, under Italian rule; confiscation of his family's house for the use of the army; joins the local Communist underground at age 11, role as contact person with the partisans in the mountains; distributing announcements, and sabatoge activities; his father's arrest and transfer to serve as a doctor in a concentration camp in Kruje, Albania; details about the Jewish refugees in Beograd; transfer with his mother to Albania; return to Prizren in 1943 with the entry of the Germans into Albania, and the preparation, by the local population, of a bunker for them to hide in; their arrest before entering the hiding place. Deportation to the Sajmiste concentration camp; daily life in the camp at the start of 1944, and knowledge of the extermination of Jews and Gypsies there during 1941-1942; deportation from Beograd to Bergen-Belsen by a special transport, June 1944; arrival at the camp and his first impression; joining a group of children organized by Rabbi David Levy to study Hebrew; worsening of the situation at the end of 1944; hunger, disease, typhus, lice, death; his parents' efforts to overcome the hardships of existence; the influence of the sights of destruction and terror; evacuation on foot and by train while being shelled, April 1945; his father's death and burial in Troebitz, Germany; liberation by the Red Army. Return to Prizren with his mother; aliya to Eretz Israel, 1948; commemorating the Holocaust through painting.