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Oral history interview with Iztchak Yudkes

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1995.A.1272.263 | RG Number: RG-50.120.0263

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    Oral history interview with Iztchak Yudkes

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Itzchak Yudkes, born in Białystok, Poland in 1926, describes being the younger by sixteen years of two children; attending a Taḥkemoni school; his family's Orthodoxy; participating in a Zionist youth group; attending summer camp in Płatkownica in 1938; antisemitic harassment by children; Soviet occupation in September 1939; German invasion in June 1941; witnessing the main synagogue set on fire with hundreds of Jews inside; ghettoization; working at several jobs; his sister, who was blond, trading possessions outside the ghetto for food; hiding with his family during a mass deportation in February 1943; separation from them; learning his sister, her two children, and his mother had been deported; public hanging of a Jew who had resisted; witnessing the revenge killing of a Jew who had revealed other Jews during the deportation; and separation from his father during liquidation of the ghetto; being deported to a work camp; being transferred to Majdanek, then Bliżyn; slave labor in a fabric mill; hospitalization; recovery; assignment to the kitchen; being transferred to Auschwitz/Birkenau in July 1944; assignment with other youths to a Polish children's barrack; fasting on Yom Kippur; transfer with the other children to Oranienburg, Sachsenhausen, then Ohrdruf; slave labor digging in nearby mountains; a German guard allowing him and a friend to eat from a plum tree; transfer to Neubrandenburg, then Ludwigslust in April 1945; being offered cooked human flesh by Soviet prisoners; liberation by United States troops the next day; returning to Poland seeking relatives; joining a kibbutz in Warsaw; preparing for emigration to Palestine in Sosnowiec; moving with the group to Graz; the Jewish Brigade organizing their illegal emigration from Marseille via Belgium; British interdiction; living on kibbutzim; military draft in 1950; his career as a police officer; and how he often felt disembodied and “outside of himself” during his worst experiences.
    Interviewee
    Iztchak Yudkes
    Date
    interview:  1995 November 30
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection

    Physical Details

    Language
    Hebrew
    Extent
    9 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

    Personal Name
    Yudkes, Iztchak.

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    Nathan Beyrak conducted the interview with Iztchak Yudkes in Israel on November 30, 1995. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the tapes of the interview in May 31, 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 08:15:51
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn503088

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