Oral history interview with Irving Bashevkin
Some video files begin with 10-60 seconds of color bars.
Irving Bashevkin (born in 1924 in North Adams, Massachusetts) describes entering Buchenwald concentration camp as an American Jewish soldier; seeing the inmates in the barracks and the crematorium; finding it difficult to comprehend the camp; being in the camp just to witness it; not always being aware of exactly where they were as his unit traveled through France, Belgium, and Germany; the conditions of the concentration camp survivors; the local German civilians claiming not to know what was happening in the camp; the smells in the camp; the subtle and blatant antisemitism in the US Army; and not celebrating Jewish holidays while he was in the army.