Overview
- Interview Summary
- Abe Malnik discusses the German invasion of Kaunas, Lithuania when he was 13 years old; his family and upbringing; the creation of the ghetto; his memories of mass murder in Kaunas; hiding in a cellar with two women who had infants; how one of the mothers suffocated her own infant to prevent it from crying and betraying their location; the demand by the Germans for the Jews’ furs and jewelry; being transported to Germany on a cattle car; going first to Stutthof, which is the last place he saw his mother; being transferred to Dachau, where he had to collect dead bodies and put them in a ravine; being sent to Flossenbürg and then to Leitmeritz, Czechoslovakia; his experiences in a hospital and realizing he would be killed if he stayed there; and his memories of liberation by the Soviet forces. (The testimony begins at minute 7:14.)
- Date
-
interview:
1988-1989
- Credit Line
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Holocaust Eyewitness Project and Edith Fierst
Physical Details
- Language
- English
- Extent
-
1 videocassette (U-Matic) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..
Rights & Restrictions
- Conditions on Access
- There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
- Conditions on Use
- Restrictions on use. Donor retains copyright. Third party use requests must be submitted to the donor.
- Copyright Holder
- Holocaust Eyewitness Project
Keywords & Subjects
- Topical Term
- Concentration camp inmates--Medical care. Hiding places--Lithuania--Kaunas. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Lithuania--Personal narratives. Holocaust survivors--United States. Jewish children in the Holocaust--Lithuania--Kaunas. Jewish ghettos--Lithuania--Kaunas. Jews--Lithuania--Kaunas. Massacres--Lithuania--Kaunas. Mass burials--Lithuania--Kaunas. Mass murder--Lithuania--Kaunas. World War, 1939-1945--Atrocities--Lithuania--Kaunas. World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Liberation. Men--Personal narratives.
- Geographic Name
- Kaunas (Lithuania) Litoměřice (Czech Republic) Russia--Armed forces.
- Personal Name
- Malnik, Abraham, 1927-2007.
Administrative Notes
- Legal Status
- Permanent Collection
- Provenance
- The Holocaust Eyewitness Project produced the testimony of Abe Malnik in the late 1980s in the Washington, D.C. area. Edith Fierst, on behalf of the Holocaust Eyewitness Project, donated a copy of the interview to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1989.
- Funding Note
- The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
- Special Collection
-
The Jeff and Toby Herr Oral History Archive
- Record last modified:
- 2024-02-28 13:37:55
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn39555
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Oral history interviews produced by the Holocaust Eyewitness Project.
Date: 1987-1989
Oral testimony of Paula Dash
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Paula Dash, born December 3, 1920 in Łódź, Poland, discusses the German invasion; how Jews were beaten by the Germans; having to wear a star; Jews having to turn in their valuables; her life in the Łódź ghetto from 1940 to 1944; the rations in the ghetto and “ghetto sickness”; the death of her father in the ghetto due to starvation; the deportation of her sister to Treblinka and murder in the gas chamber; the deportation of her brother to Auschwitz and his death during a death march; the hanging of Jews in the street; deaths in the winter of 1943 due to cold and hunger; the daily deportations; how the deported Jews communicated with the ghetto by leaving notes in the wagons and described the atrocities they were seeing; the execution of Jews in Chelmno, Poland; a “Kinder Aktion”, during which the Nazis rounded up children from their homes, put them in a wagon, and burned them alive; being deported in August 1944 with her mother and youngest brother; arriving at Auschwitz and being separated from her family; being given a number but no tattoo; the conditions in the camp; using the latrine; the sleeping conditions; how one afternoon she was sent to the gas chambers, told to undress, made to wait until the next morning to be gassed, and being saved by a sudden need in the camp for 300 women; being sent to Breman to do hard labor until February 1945; being sent on a death march to Bergen-Belsen in March 1945; being crammed with other prisoners in a dark barrack where Nazis poured boiling water on them to quiet them down; seeing piles of dead people; sickness in the camp; watching a mass grave being dug and prisoners dragging bodies to it; seeing some male prisoners become cannibals and how one of these men was then kicked and beaten to death; coming down with typhus and being saved by four friends; being liberated the next day by the British; how she still has a towel she had during her imprisonment and a piece of soap made out of Jewish fat; and her immigration to the United States June 1, 1951.
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Oral history interview with Henry Greenbaum
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Oral history interview with Maryla Orgel Korn
Oral History
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Oral history interview with Helen Luksenburg and William Luksenburg
Oral History
Helen Luksenburg and William Luksenburg describe the how they endured terrible hardships in concentration camps, including Blechhammer, Flossenbürg, and Ravensbrück; how William was injured in the stone quarry at Flossenbürg; marching to Ravensbrück and his strategies for surviving the death march; how he collapsed unnoticed during the march and being saved by a farmer; how he was treated with DDT for lice by the U.S. army; meeting each other as prisoners in the camps; and how they reunited after the war.
Oral history interview with Lou Pohoryles
Oral History
Lou Pohoryles, born in L’vov, Poland (present day L'viv, Ukraine) in 1937, describes his family; how his father was a highly ranked tennis player; going to a series of hiding places; how his father at the beginning of the war placed him in the care of a Polish nun, who protected him; being instructed to identify the nun as his aunt and hide his true identity; being given to her sister, Anya Baska; traveling through partisan areas and fearing the Ukrainians; being transported on a cattle car to a labor camp in Germany with Anya and ending up on a farm; going to an ammunitions factory because Anya was needed there; learning German and befriending tank soldiers; the death of his parents; how after the war he was reclaimed by an uncle, who was a religious man; how as a boy he identified as Catholic; how being separated from Anya and thrust into Judaism was traumatic; never seeing Anya again; and immigrating to the United States.
Oral history interview with Harriet Steinhorn-Roth
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Oral history interview with Richard Schifter
Oral History
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Oral history interview with Brenda Senders
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Oral history interview with Leon Senders
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Oral history interview with Regina Gutman Spiegel
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Regina Spiegel, born in Radom, Poland on April 20, 1926, discusses her views on why the Nazis killed Jews; the Nazi invasion, during which she was age 13; her family; being vulnerable to those in control; how her family gave up all their valuables; the antisemitic laws; the establishment of the ghetto in 1940; bribing the ghetto guards so she could escape; taking a train to her sister’s home in a nearby village; working in a camp there; how her sister was turned in to the Gestapo and was later killed while trying to escape a train; being sent to Auschwitz; conditions on the train and the altruism of the passengers; getting to Auschwitz, being stripped of clothing, tattooed, and having all her hair removed in the showers; going back to Auschwitz in 1976; being put to work in a munitions factory at Bergen-Belsen; being on a train that was bombed by Allied Forces and sustaining shrapnel injuries; German and Jewish relations; the death of her sister and nephew; and the depression in Germany.
Oral history interview with Marion Wolff
Oral History
Marion Wolff discusses her experiences as a schoolchild in Nazi Germany, including her memories of Kristallnacht and her family’s escape from Germany to the United States at the start of the war.
