Advanced Search

Learn About The Holocaust

Special Collections

My Saved Research

Login

Register

Help

Skip to main content

Oral history interview with Jozef Szajna

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1998.A.0114 | RG Number: RG-50.030.0391

Search this record's additional resources, such as finding aids, documents, or transcripts.

No results match this search term.
Check spelling and try again.

results are loading

0 results found for “keyward

    Oral history interview with Jozef Szajna

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Jozef Szajna, born on March 13, 1922, in Rzeszów, Poland, describes his childhood; leaving his Polish high school at seventeen and joining the Union of Armed Struggle, an underground organization; working in an airplane factory, where he replaced good parts with defective parts and made drawings of the factory's layout; being captured with a friend in January 1941 in Slovakia while trying to flee to Hungary; being turned over to the German border patrol in Muszyna, Poland and then going into prisons in five different towns; his transfer to Auschwitz in the summer of 1941; continuing his underground activities in Auschwitz by smuggling food and clothing to the women's camp; contracting typhus and going into the sick barracks; obtaining a position through friends cleaning the SS cafeteria; attempting to escape Auschwitz with two other people in August 1943 but getting caught and sentenced to hang; receiving a different sentence and instead working for the penal company; wearing a red dot, which signified that he was a dangerous prisoner; convincing a Nazi official to assign him to a Buchenwald transport, so he could attempt to escape; contracting a lung infection and remaining in the Buchenwald hospital; obtaining ink and drawing pictures in exchange for food; the evacuation of Buchenwald on April 6, 1945; escaping with another prisoner to a field after there was an explosion while on their march from Buchenwald; his liberation by American soldiers; remaining in Poland after the war and graduating from the Academy of Art in Kraków in 1947; and becoming well-known for his artwork and theater productions that depict imagery and themes from the Holocaust.
    Interviewee
    Józef Szajna
    Interviewer
    Mr. Jacek Nowakowski
    Date
    interview:  1998 May 15

    Physical Details

    Language
    Polish
    Genre/Form
    Oral histories.
    Extent
    4 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
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Szajna, Józef.

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    Jacek Nowakowski, on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History Branch, conducted the oral history interview with Jozef Szajna on May 26, 1998.
    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 08:02:33
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn506412

    Additional Resources

    Download & Licensing

    In-Person Research

    Contact Us