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Oral history interview with Yosef Schwartz

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.1272.215 | RG Number: RG-50.120.0215

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    Oral history interview with Yosef Schwartz

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Yosef Schwartz, born in Łódź, Poland in 1921, discusses his childhood years; attending public school; participating in Hashomer Hatzair and a sports organization, Bar Kochba; his family's Zionist leanings; German entrance into Łódź; one brother's escape to L’viv; a non-Jew smuggling him and his father to Warsaw, Poland to meet this brother and escape to the Soviet Union; attempting to enter the Soviet zone with his brother via Siedlce; being captured by the Soviets and sent back to Warsaw; returning to the Łódź ghetto; working in a carpentry shop in the ghetto, sabotaging furniture he built for the Germans; building sets for the ghetto theater; his brothers working for the Judenrat; one brother working in a bakery (he brought them extra bread); hiding valuables and photographs in a bunker, which they retrieved after the war; his sister's marriage (Rumkowski officiated) and her son's birth; hiding them in their bunker and their deportation; pervasive starvation; clearing the ghetto with a small group after its liquidation in 1944; being deported to Sachsenhausen; beatings and random shootings; working with Mendel Grossman; smuggling extra food to his family; public hangings of those caught smuggling food; the transfer of his father and brothers to Königs Wusterhausen and joining them shortly thereafter; clearing bombing rubble in Berlin, Germany; the Kommandant keeping them from a death march (Grossman perished on the death march) and hiding among them; liberation by Soviet troops on April 25, 1945; the Kommandant's discovery and execution; returning to Łódź; his mother's return; his younger brother's immigration to Palestine; living in Feldafing displaced persons camp; getting married in 1948; immigrating to Israel in 1949; adjustment to life in Israel; the theater and concerts in the ghetto; the work of Mendel Grossman as a clandestine ghetto photographer; the Israelis' lack of interest in his experiences; not sharing his experiences with his children; and the drawings and photographs he had hidden and recovered, including those by Grossman.
    Interviewee
    Yosef Schwartz
    Date
    interview:  1995 August 24
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection

    Physical Details

    Language
    Hebrew
    Extent
    6 videocassettes (U-Matic) : sound, color ; 3/4 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    Nathan Beyrak conducted the interview with Yosef Shwartz in Israel on August 24, 1995. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the tapes of the interview on January 1, 1996, as an accretion to the original collection of Israel Documentation Project interviews received by transfer in February 1995.
    Funding Note
    The cataloging of this oral history interview has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:15:34
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn502991

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