Victor P. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Victor P., who was born in Krako?w, Poland in 1919. He recalls two years attending medical school; German invasion; escaping with his father and brother to L?viv in the Soviet zone; his brother's assignment as a physician in a border town; traveling with him; returning to Krako?w; obtaining papers of a dead Pole from Polish friends; establishing a network to obtain papers of Poles ordered to report for forced labor in Germany and replacing them with Jews; retrieving his brother from Ukraine after German invasion of the U.S.S.R.; sending him to Germany to work as a Pole (he survived); betrayal in 1943; imprisonment; an unsuccessful suicide attempt (he did not want to betray anyone); a Polish friend suggesting he admit he was Jewish to avoid execution; transfer to the ghetto jail, then Auschwitz/Birkenau; a friend registering him as a medical orderly which saved his life; a German kapo nursing him through typhus; becoming a medical orderly, a privileged position; receiving extra food from Polish prisoners who could receive packages; and one friend's ruse to save thirty to fifty prisoners during selections. Mr. P. discusses his book and many Poles who helped him and other Jews survive.
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. This testimony or excerpts from it cannot be used for commercial, trade or pictorial art.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- P., Victor, -- 1919-1999.
Corporate Bodies
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Video tapes.
- Holocaust survivors.
- False papers.
- Hiding.
- Jews -- Poland -- Kraków.
- Forced labor.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Mutual aid.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Jews -- Migrations.
- Men.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Prisoners and prisons, Polish.
- Jewish ghettos.
- Refugees, Jewish.
- Brothers.
Places
- Poland.
- Kraków ghetto.
- Lʹviv (Ukraine)
- Kraków (Poland)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat