- Summary
- Videotape testimony of Israel G., a prominent Holocaust scholar, who was born in 1923 in Warsaw, Poland. He recounts his family moving frequently; their economic instability; his older sister's illness; participating in Hashomer Hatzair; German invasion; his father's death; ghettoization; meetings of Hashomer Hatzair; supporting his family by doing forced labor in place of others; his older sister's and mother's deaths; placing his younger sister in the Korczak orphanage; delivering underground newspapers; acting as a counselor to Hashomer Hatzair children's groups which provided social services and protection; joining the antifascist bloc in March 1942; visiting his sister weekly; round-ups and deportations; forced factory labor; deportation of his sister's orphanage; contacts with Mordecai Anielewicz, Mordechai Growas, Arye Wilner, Margalit Landau, Yitzhak Zuckerman, Shmuel Brelsav, and others; planning to fight the Germans, knowing it was suicide and in opposition to the Judenrat; assignment to a bunker at Franciszkanska 30; killing a German soldier; capture when the bunker was gassed in May 1943; shooting of every fifth or sixth person; deportation to Majdanek; hospitalization; a prisoner-doctor hiding him during selections; transfer to Auschwitz in July; assignment to Buna/Monowitz; hospitalization; return to Auschwitz I; slave labor in the Union Kommando; participating in the underground led by Bruno Baum; being assigned to smuggle explosives; transfer to Mauthausen; Czechs throwing them food; cannibalism; and a death march to Gunskirchen.
Mr. G. recalls liberation on May 5, 1945; walking to Wels; hospitalization in Linz; traveling with the Jewish Brigade to Modena and living in a kibbutz in Santa Maria di Leuca; working with Hashomer Hatzair in Rome; arrest when attempting illegal entry into Austria; brief imprisonment in France; working in Austria and Milan; a two-week trip to Poland, including Łódź; illegal immigration to Palestine in 1947; and living on a kibbutz for twenty-five years. Mr. G. discusses resistance as suicide, not heroic; the organization of the undergrounds in Warsaw and Auschwitz; prisoner solidarity in concentration camps; and being the sole survivor of his family and youth group.
- Author/Creator
- G., Israel, 1923-2013.
- Published
- Ramat Aviv, Israel : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1991
- Interview Date
- November 21, 1991.
- Locale
- Poland
Warsaw
Warsaw (Poland)
Wels (Austria)
Linz (Austria)
Modena (Italy)
Santa Maria di Leuca, Cape (Italy)
Rome (Italy)
Milan (Italy)
Austria
Łódź (Poland)
- Cite As
- Israel G. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3325). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.
- Other Authors/Editors
- Amit, Yoram, interviewer.
Ofer, Dalia, interviewer.
- Notes
-
This testimony is in Hebrew.
Related publication: Widerstand in Auschwitz / Bruno Baum. -- Berlin : Kongress-Verlag, c1961.
