- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Sam G., who was born in Poland. He recounts antisemitic harassment; attending school in Piotrków Trybunalski; working in Łódź; bringing his mother there for surgery in late summer 1939; German invasion delaying the surgery; her death; difficulty providing a Jewish burial due to German restrictions; returning home; eviction from their home by the Germans; his brother's disappearance (he suspects he escaped to Soviet territory and harbors the hope he is still alive); a childhood friend who was a German officer warning him to leave town; the mayor providing him with false papers as a non-Jew; his father's refusal to leave; traveling to Warsaw; working with Armia Krajowa (AK), the Polish underground; smuggling arms to Warsaw from Mińsk Mazowiecki; traveling to Dobre to obtain arms; leaving when an AK colleague discovered he was Jewish; entering the Warsaw ghetto; escaping two weeks later; returning to Piotrków; entering the ghetto to join his family; public hangings and shootings; deportation to Bliżyn, then Birkenau; slave labor; assistance from a fellow prisoner to obtain a privileged assignment in Canada Kommando; clearing freight cars after new prisoners arrived; learning of the gas chambers and crematoria; planning to commit suicide; changing his mind at the last minute in order to document what he observed; train transport to Kaltwasser in 1944; a death march to Flossenbürg; transfer to Mühldorf; liberation from a train by United States soldiers; and a nurse in a field hospital saving his life.
- Author/Creator
- Sam G.
- Published
- Los Angeles, Calif. : UCLA Holocaust Documentation Archives, 1983
- Interview Date
- June 18, 1983.
- Locale
- Poland
Warsaw
Piotrków Trybunalski
Dobre (Poland)
Mińsk Mazowiecki (Poland)
Warsaw (Poland)
Łódź (Poland)
Piotrków Trybunalski (Poland)
- Cite As
- Sam G. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-452). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Kinsler, Florabel, interviewer.
Portnoy, Charles, interviewer.
