Ziggy S. Holocaust testimony
Abstract
Videotape testimony of Ziggy S., who was born in Łódź, Poland in 1930. He recounts his parents' divorce; living with his paternal grandparents; attending a Jewish school; his father escaping east immediately prior to the German occupation; ghettoization in spring 1940; working in a metal factory; constant hunger; attempts to obtain extra food; deportation to Auschwitz/Birkenau in summer 1944; transfer a few weeks later to Stutthof; volunteering with friends in December when sixteen-year-olds were sought; transfer to Stolp; slave labor on a railway; his group of twenty Polish boys having difficulty with prisoners of other nationalities; improved food and heat; a public hanging; return to Stutthof in March 1945; placement on barges in April with no food or water; abandonment by the guards; Danish and Norwegian prisoners-of-war navigating the barges to land; recapture by Germans; his friends carrying him on the death march to Neustadt; liberation by British troops on May 3; becoming ill from eating; assistance from the Red Cross; a three-month hospitalization; transfer to Neustadt displaced persons camp, then a children's home with several of his camp friends; assistance from UNRRA; receiving a letter from his mother in January 1946; his friends persuading him to visit her in London; meeting her in December 1946; socializing with Jewish survivors, some of whom he had known, who became his lifelong friends; marriage; and the births of two daughters and five grandchildren. Mr. S. discusses the importance of friends and luck to his survival; always discussing their experiences when meeting with his survivor friends; and not sharing these experiences with his daughters.
Extent and Medium
2 videocassettes
Conditions Governing Access
This testimony can only be viewed at Yale by Yale faculty and/or students.
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 publication.
Rules and Conventions
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Process Info
compiled by Staff of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
People
- S., Ziggy, -- 1930-
Corporate Bodies
- Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
- Birkenau (Concentration camp)
- United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
- International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.
- Stutthof (Concentration camp)
- Neustadt-Glewe (Concentration camp)
Subjects
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Atrocities.
- Concentration camps -- Sociological aspects.
- Prisoners of war -- Norway.
- Prisoners of war -- Denmark.
- Death marches.
- Prisoners of war -- Germany.
- Friendship.
- Refugee camps.
- Mutual aid.
- Child survivors.
- Survivor-child relations.
- Postwar experiences.
- Holocaust survivors.
- Video tapes.
- Men.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) -- Personal narratives.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Jewish.
- World War, 1939-1945 -- Children.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust.
- Jewish ghettos.
- Forced labor.
- Jews -- Poland -- Łódź.
Places
- Poland.
- Łódź ghetto.
- Łódź (Poland)
- Stolp (Germany : Concentration camp)
- Neustadt (Germany : Refugee camp)
Genre
- Oral histories. -- aat