Israel (Laszlo) Lazar papers

Israel Laszlo Lazar (Israel László Lázár) was born on January 25, 1930 in Oradea, Romania (Oradea-Mare, Transylvania, Romania) to Rozalia (1905-1944, née Braun) and Jeno (1897-1945) Lazar. He had a younger brother, Aharon Tibor Lazar (1932-1944). During the war, they lived in Nagyvárad until Hungary was invaded by the Germans. When Lazar was 14 years old, he and his family were taken to the Nagyvárad ghetto until they were transported to Auschwitz in late May 1944. At the suggestion of a sonderkommando, or a Jewish prisoner forced to work at gas chambers and crematoria, Lazar stated that he was sixteen, instead of fourteen years old, marking his birth date in records as March 15, 1928. His mother, brother, grandfather Mort, and many other relatives perished in the gas chambers. Lazar and his father were selected for work and were taken to Buchenwald in June 1944. Between 1944 and 1945, Lazar, his father, and uncle were forced to work in a factory called Brabag making synthetic petroleum in Rehmsdorf at the Wille forced labor camp, a subcamp of Buchenwald. In January 1945, Lazar was sent to a crematorium in Buchenwald where he was eventually liberated by the American army in April. Following his liberation from Buchenwald in 1945 and his recovery from typhus, Lazar was repatriated and reunited with his uncle in Oradea, where he learned of his father’s death. He lived with his uncle until 1951 and then immigrated to Israel where he married and had four children. He served in the Israeli Air Force for 31 years and retired as a sergeant major.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Israel Laszlo Lazar donated this collection to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives in July 1997.