Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Mayer B. Holocaust testimony (HVT-338) interviewed by Sara Weinberger,

Oral History | Fortunoff Collection ID: HVT-338

Videotape testimony of Mayer B., who was born in approximately 1921 and lived in Kraków, Poland. He describes attending public school; pervasive antisemitism; active participation in Akiva; German invasion; his family selling their belongings to get food; forced labor; ghettoization; transfer to a labor camp at the airport (his parents and brothers remained in the ghetto); transfer to Schindler's factory; transfer to Płaszów, then Mauthausen, in 1944; slave labor in a quarry; transfer a month later to Linz III-Kleinmünchen; working in a tank factory; happiness at Allied bombings; working with Russian, French, and American POWs; liberation in May 1945; hospitalization; living in a displaced persons camp near Linz; assistance from UNRRA; working for the Joint in Linz; attending the Dachau trial as a potential witness (he did not testify); and emigration to the United States in 1949. Mr. B. discusses losing hope in the camps; attributing his survival to luck; not feeling defined by his Judaism as he did before the war; not sharing his experiences; and frequent nightmares.

Author/Creator
B., Mayer, 1921?-
Published
Cleveland, Ohio : National Council of Jewish Women, Holocaust Archive Project, 1984
Interview Date
August 9, 1984.
Locale
Poland
Kraków
Austria
Germany
Linz (Austria)
Kraków (Poland)
Language
English
Copies
2 copies: 3/4 in. dub; and 1/2 in. VHS with time coding.
Cite As
Mayer B. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-338). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.