- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Richard O., who was born in Kraków, Poland in 1920. Mr. O. remembers German invasion in September 1939; fleeing east; returning to Kraków; anti-Jewish restrictions; forced labor; once refusing to work; ghettoization; training as a nurse in the Jewish hospital, then working there; hospital workers' exemption from deportation; his mother's deportation; helping a patient escape from the ghetto; transfer to Płasźow in February 1943; working in the hospital; public hangings; delivering medication to the Kommandant, Amon Goeth; help from an SS guard; a mass shooting of Jewish police; a forced march to Auschwitz/Birkenau, then Gleiwitz in January 1945; train transport to Sachsenhausen; Czechs throwing them food; transfer to Flossenbürg, then a sub-camp in February 1945; deteriorating physically; refusing to work; transfer to Dachau in April 1945; a priest registering him as a Catholic; and liberation by United States troops. Mr. O. recounts recovering in an American hospital; living in a displaced persons camp; contracting tuberculosis; recovering in Davos, Switzerland; attending medical school and living in Bern for twelve years; marriage to an American; and emigration to the United States. He notes witnessing cannibalism at a camp and testifying at a German war crime trial.
- Author/Creator
- O., Richard, 1920-
- Published
- New York, N.Y. : A Living Memorial to the Holocaust Museum of Jewish Heritage, 1994
- Interview Date
- April 18, 1994.
- Locale
- Poland
Kraków
Germany
Bern (Switzerland)
Davos (Switzerland)
Kraków (Poland)
- Cite As
- Richard O. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-2935). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Blinderman, Joni-Sue, interviewer.
