Heinz Hesdörffer memoir
Extent and Medium
folder
1
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
Heinrich (Heinz) Hesdörffer donated his memoir to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on March 6, 2007.
Scope and Content
Consists of one memoir, 293 pages, written by Heinrich (Heinz) Hesdörffer, born in Bad Kreuznach, Germany and raised in Fulda, Germany. In the memoir, Mr. Hesdörffer describes his childhood, his evacuation (with other children, including his younger brother Ernst) to the Netherlands in March 1939, Ernst's deportation (despite Heinrich's efforts to protect him), his own deportation in March 1943 to Westerbork, and his subsequent deportation, first to Theresienstadt in February 1944, and then to Auschwitz in May 1944. Mr. Hesdörffer was transferred to the Schwarzheide subcamp, where he was forced to labor for the Brubag petrol company. In April 1945, he was evacuated to Sachsenhausen, then forced on a death march. He was liberated by the Russian army on May 2, 1945. This memoir is an English language translation of "Bekannte traf man viele..Aufzeichnungen eines deutschen Juden aus dem Winter 1945/1946," which was published by Chronos Verlag in Zurich in 1998. The memoir was originally written in the winter of 1945/1946, when Mr. Hesdörffer was recovering in Brussels, Belgium.
Genre
- Personal narratives.
- Document