Fred B. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Fred B., who was born in ?o?dz?, Poland in 1909. One of nine children, he recalls his father owned a tailor shop which employed twenty-two workers; attending school; learning tailoring from his father; antisemitism; marriage at age twenty-seven; enlisting in the Polish army reserves; and the German invasion. Mr. B. recounts ghettoization; forced labor assembling army uniforms; the round-up of elderly and children, including his two-year-old son; learning they had all been gassed; receiving food and information from a German officer they had known before the war; deportation to Auschwitz; being brutally beaten by guards; transfer three days later to Kaufering, then Dachau and Kempten; camp conditions including cruel kapos, beatings and murders; and libration by American troops from a death march. He describes learning of his wife's death; returning to ?o?dz?; reunion with a brother and a sister; fleeing to Germany; working for a United States agency; and emigration to the United States in 1949.
Extent and Medium
2 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony is open with permission.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright has been transferred to the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Use of this testimony requires permission of the Fortunoff Video Archive.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- B., Fred, -- 1909-1999.
Corporate Bodies
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- Dachau (Concentration camp)
- Kaufering (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Death marches.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Atrocities.
- Antisemitism -- Postwar.
- Wife -- Death.
- Postwar experiences.
- Mass killings.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Men.
- Video tapes.
- Children -- Death.
- Forced labor.
- Jewish ghettos.
- Jews -- Poland -- Łódź.
- Holocaust survivors.
Places
- Poland.
- Łódź (Poland)
- Łódź ghetto.
- Kempten (Germany : Concentration camp)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat