- Summary
- Videotape testimony of George Z., who was born in Katowice, Poland in 1933, an only child, and raised in Będzin. He recounts living with his parents and grandparents; their affluence; German invasion in 1939; fleeing to Kielce; returning home about a week later; finding their apartment ransacked; staying home while the adults worked; forced relocation; ghettoization in Kamionka; hiding with others during round-ups; his father purchasing false papers; escaping with his parents and grandparents to Budapest; his mother dyeing his hair blond; German invasion in March 1944; escaping to Bratislava; arrest en route; a Pole releasing them from a Polish prisoner of war camp; arrest while attempting to return to Budapest; deportation to Sered, then Auschwitz in November 1944; briefly remaining with his family, then separation to a children's barrack; his father bringing him extra food; hospitalization for scarlet fever; a death march in January 1945; abandonment by the guards the first night; returning to Auschwitz; liberation by Soviet troops; an uncle bringing him to Kraków; his disappearance (he had been arrested); bringing him food in prison; placement with local Jews; attending school for the first time; traveling to Budapest in June hoping to find his family; placement in a Hashomer Hatzair orphanage; reunion with his mother in Prague; traveling with her to the Bergen-Belsen displaced persons camp where she had left his grandmother (she died in the interim); living in Kaunitz; his mother's marriage in Esslingen to a distant cousin who adopted him; his bar mitzvah; emigration to the United States in April 1950; his education; and his career as a physics professor. Mr. Z. discusses the hierarchy of national prisoner groups in Auschwitz and not knowing the fate of his father and grandfather. He shows photographs.
- Author/Creator
- Z., George, 1933-
- Published
- New Haven, Conn. : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 2014
- Interview Date
- May 8, 2014.
- Locale
- Poland
Będzin
Kamionka
Hungary
Budapest
Katowice (Poland)
Będzin (Poland)
Kielce (Poland)
Budapest (Hungary)
Bratislava (Slovakia)
Kraków (Poland)
Prague (Czech Republic)
Kaunitz (Germany)
Esslingen am Neckar (Germany)
- Cite As
- George Z. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-4465). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Langer, Lawrence L., interviewer.
