Michael J. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Michael J., who was born in Konin, Poland in approximately 1925, one of six children. He recounts his family's orthodoxy; antisemitic harassment in public school; German invasion; anti-Jewish restrictions; a public execution; transfer in cattle trains to the Ostrowiec S?wie?tokrzyski ghetto; smuggling food and supplies into the ghetto; a round-up in 1942 (two siblings hid and were caught); his parents' deportation; remaining in the smaller ghetto with his brother; his brother's escape (he was killed with the partisans); obtaining weapons for the underground; forced labor clearing Jewish homes; finding abandoned infants (the Germans killed them); escaping from the ghetto with false papers; briefly hiding as a non-Jew with assistance from a Pole; entering Ostrowiec labor camp; slave labor in a brick factory; deportation to Birkenau in 1944; assisting the camp underground; the Sonderkommando uprising; public executions; a death march in January 1945 to Mauthausen; transfer to Gusen; slave labor in an airplane factory; sabotaging airplane parts; liberation by United States troops; assistance from the Red Cross; organizing sports in displaced persons camps; and emigration to the United States. Mr. J. discusses never losing hope of surviving, and the deaths of his immediate family and about eighty relatives in the Holocaust.
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
- J., Michael, -- 1925?-
Corporate Bodies
- Gusen (Concentration camp)
- Mauthausen (Concentration camp)
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
- Ostrowiec (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Concentration camps -- Revolts.
- Postwar experiences.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Concentration camps -- Underground movements.
- False papers.
- Hiding.
- Child survivors.
- Antisemitism -- Prewar.
- Sabotage.
- Refugee camps.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Underground movements -- Poland.
- Concentration camps -- Psychological aspects.
- Forced labor.
- Escapes.
- Jews -- Poland -- Ostrowiec SĚwiętokrzyski.
- Jewish ghettos.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Atrocities.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Men.
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
Places
- Ostrowiec ghetto.
- Konin (Konin, Poland)
- Poland.
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat