- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Joseph M., who was born in Poland in 1922. He recalls German invasion; the bombing of his home on his birthday, September 25, 1939; anti-Jewish regulations; his family's decision that he should escape to the Soviet zone; seeing his mother for the last time on October 19th; being hidden and guided to the Soviet border by a peasant woman; working in Borisov; learning of his father's and brother's escape to the Soviet zone; and losing contact with his mother and sister after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Mr. M. recounts fleeing by train to Smolensk, then Kazakhstan; conscription into the Soviet army; forced labor in a Siberian coal mine from early 1942 onward; severe cold, hunger, and discipline; returning to Poland in 1946; fleeing to the American zone with help from Zionist groups; living in displaced persons camps in Wegscheid, Admont and Wels; working for the Joint in Linz; marrying in 1949; and emigrating to the United States in 1951. He notes finding surviving cousins, but never learning the fate of his parents and siblings.
- Author/Creator
- M., Joseph, 1922-
- Published
- Peabody, Mass. : Holocaust Center of the Jewish Federation of the North Shore, 1989
- Interview Date
- May 22, 1989.
- Locale
- Poland
Warsaw (Poland)
Kazakhstan
Barysaŭ (Belarus)
Smolensk (Russia)
Siberia (Russia)
Linz (Austria)
- Cite As
- Joseph M. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1383). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Remis, Deborah Shelkan, interviewer.
Miller, Janet, interviewer.
- Notes
-
Video distortion in some segments of this testimony.
