- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Jack A., who was born in Bełchatów, Poland in 1927, one of four children. He recounts a happy childhood; attending public and Hebrew schools; anti-Jewish violence; German invasion in 1939; anti-Jewish restrictions; his older brother fleeing to Łódź, then Warsaw (he was killed in a bombing); public hanging of ten prominent Jews, including his uncle; ghettoization; his sister's marriage; a round-up; his brother's and grandmother's deportation to Chełmno; forced labor with his father cleaning the ghetto; transfer to the Łódź ghetto with his parents and sister; slave labor; his sister giving birth; pervasive deaths; deportation with his parents, sister, and her child to Auschwitz/Birkenau in 1944; his mother, sister, and her child being selected for death; working with his father; praying daily; transfer four weeks later to Siegmar-Schoenau; slave labor in a factory; his father sharing food; Allied bombings; transfer to Hohenstein-Ernstthal; a death march to Czechoslovakia in April 1945; liberation; transfer to Prague; hospitalization; his father's transfer to Plzeň; not finding him there; returning to Bełchatów; reunion with his father; Poles in their house refusing to return it; antisemitic harassment; rebuilding his father's tannery; a death threat by a Polish paramilitary group; traveling to Łódź, then Germany; living in Freising; his father's remarriage; his sister's birth; visiting his aunt in Sweden in 1948; remaining there; his father's, stepmother's and sister's emigration to Israel; meeting his future wife (a survivor from Bełchatów); emigration to the United States in 1953; marriage; and his father's death from cancer in 1957. He shows photographs.
- Author/Creator
- A., Jack, 1927-
- Published
- Dallas, Tex. : Memorial Center for Holocaust Studies, 1987
- Interview Date
- February 22, 1987 and September 20, 1987.
- Locale
- Poland
Łódź
Bełchatów
Bełchatów (Poland)
Prague (Czech Republic)
Plzeň (Czech Republic)
Łódź (Poland)
Freising (Germany)
Sweden
- Cite As
- Jack A. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-1364). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Gadol, Ann, interviewer.
Weinberg, Debbie, interviewer.
