Yosef B. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Yosef B., who was born in Kraków, Poland in 1920, one of three brothers. He recounts his family's assimilated lifestyle; his father hiring a rabbi to tutor him for his bar mitzvah; studying graphic design at art school; German invasion in 1939; his mother paying a non-Jew to hide him and his brothers; ghettoization; working as a graphic artist for the Judenrat and German police, making signs in Gothic calligraphy; helping produce false papers; his thirteen-year-old brother's death; deportation to Płaszów; doing lettering for Kommandant Amon Goeth; receiving extra food from Polish workers; witnessing his father's murder by a German guard; marrying a fellow prisoner in February 1944; being placed on Schindler's list for helping save the parent of the list maker; transfer with the men from the list to Gross-Rosen, then Brünnlitz; liberation by Soviet troops; returning to Kraków; learning his mother had died after liberation; traveling to Moravska Ostrava, than Opava to find his wife; their return to Kraków; his daughter's birth; emigration to Israel in 1950; and another daughter's birth. Mr. B. discusses testifying at a war crimes trial in Vienna; sharing his experiences with his children; and historical inaccuracies in the film "Schindler's List." He shows his diploma; a book of songs and drawings he made during the war; and other documents.
Extent and Medium
6 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., Yosef, -- 1920-
- Göth, Amon, -- 1908-1946.
- Schindler, Oskar, -- 1908-1974.
Corporate Bodies
- Brünnlitz (Concentration camp)
- Płaszów (Concentration camp)
- Gross-Rosen (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- Marriage in concentration camps.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Postwar experiences.
- Jewish councils.
- Husband and wife.
- Concentration camp inmates -- Family relationships.
- War crime trials -- Austria -- Vienna.
- False papers.
- Aid by non-Jews.
- Hiding.
- Mutual aid.
- Jewish ghettos.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- Men.
- Brothers.
- Fathers and sons.
- Forced labor.
- Jews -- Poland -- Kraków.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Video tapes.
Places
- Opava (Czech Republic)
- Kraków ghetto.
- Brno (Czech Republic)
- Ostrava (Czech Republic)
- Poland.
- Kraków (Poland)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat