Dov Davidovich (M / Lithuania, 1928), Holocaust survivor

Dov Davidovich (M / Lithuania, 1928), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Kovno Getto> <Dachau> <Death March>

USHMM Oral Interview

Dov Davidovich, born in 1928 in Kaunus, Lithuania, discusses being the youngest of three children; attending Hebrew school; summer vacations in Kulautuva; his father's death in 1938; Soviet occupation; nationalization of his family's property; summering with an uncle in Jieznas; German invasion; ghettoization; working as a carpenter; his family surviving the large Aktion of October 1941; his sister smuggling food for them; his mother's deportation; witnessing Germans and Lithuanians killing infants during another Aktion; his brother serving in the Jewish police; hiding with his siblings in a bunker during the ghetto's liquidation; discovery; deportation to Stutthof; separation from his sister; transfer with his brother to Dachau; slave labor doing construction; transfer to Landshut, then back to Dachau; train transport and a death march during which his brother was killed; liberation by United States troops in Mittenwald on May 1, 1945; traveling with the Jewish Brigade to Treviso; living in Youth Aliyah camps outside Florence, then Genoa; illegal immigration by ship to Palestine; reunion with a cousin located by the Red Cross; military enlistment in 1948; serving five years; marriage; the births of three children; his brother's help in camps; memory gaps, including his time in Feldafing after liberation; learning his sister had survived; her immigration to Israel in 1972; not sharing his story with his children; and a recent trip to Lithuania with them.