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Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.341.1 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0046

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    Oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Thomas Buergenthal, born in 1934 in Czechoslovakia, describes his family; moving with his family to Žilina, Czechoslovakia in 1938 and facing persecution from the Hlinka Guard; moving to Katowice, Poland and registering with the British Consul; leaving for England on September 1, 1939 but being stopped near the Russian border when their train was bombed by Germans; having to march with a group of refugees to Kielce, Poland and go into its ghetto; the deportation of his grandparents and twenty thousand other ghetto inhabitants in August 1942 to Treblinka while he and his parents were sent to a forced labor camp in Kielce; surviving a massacre of Jewish children and then being transported with his parents to a factory where they made wooden carts for the Eastern Front; his deportation in August 1944 to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he worked in the laundry as an errand boy; getting separated from his father and never seeing him again; being forced on a death march to Gliwice, Poland and then to Heinkel concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany in January 1945; his transfer to a sub-camp of Sachsenhausen; his liberation on April 27, 1945 by Russian soldiers; marching with the First Polish Division into Berlin, Germany and Siedlce, Poland and then being placed in a Jewish orphanage in Otwock, Poland; his mother finding him in 1946 and smuggling him into the British zone of Germany; living in Göttingen, Germany and attending high school there; immigrating by himself to the United States in 1951 to live with his uncle; his mother remarrying and staying in Europe; attending Harvard Law School and becoming a professor of International Law at the George Washington University Law School; and serving on the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the United States Holocaust Memorial Council’s Committee on Conscience.
    Interviewee
    Thomas Buergenthal
    Interviewer
    Linda G. Kuzmack
    Date
    interview:  1990 January 29
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Genre/Form
    Oral histories.
    Extent
    2 videocasettes (Betacam SP) : sound, color ; 1/2 in..

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    Restrictions on use. Interview cannot be used for sale in the Museum Shop. Interview cannot be used by a third party for creation of a work for commercial purposes. Interviewee's name may not be substituted with a pseudonym. Interview may not be used for Museum or Council fund raising purposes.

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Buergenthal, Thomas.

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    Linda Kuzmack, on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Branch, conducted the oral history interview with Thomas Buergenthal on January 29, 1990.
    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 08:00:27
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn504546

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