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Oral history interview with Mitchell Falenski

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1990.338.16 | RG Number: RG-50.037.0016

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    Oral history interview with Mitchell Falenski

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Mitchell Falenski, born in Warsaw, Poland, describes his close-knit, middle-class family; his parents, brother, and sister; his father’s dry goods store (he shows a 1939 high school photograph of himself); the German occupation and being forced to do useless busy work until 1941-1942 when the ghetto walls were built; conditions in the ghetto; being taken in 1942 to a concentration camp in Szamos and then Majdanek a year later; never seeing his parents again; being forced to do hard, senseless labor; witnessing infanticide; helping to remove dead bodies from Majdanek; the interactions between the inmates; being hit on the head by a supervisor and still having a scar from it; experiencing nightmares after the Holocaust; being transferred to a munitions factory in Czestochowa with some friends, whom he still sees in Buffalo, NY; the German guards leaving as the Russians approached; being liberated by the Russians (he shows a shirt that he made from rags in the camp and a photographs of himself in an American army coat supplied by UNRRA); getting a job as a reporter for a Polish Government newspaper in Lublin, Poland; getting married; being shot in the abdomen by an antisemite and being operated on in an army hospital; going to Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) then Sweden in 1947 with his wife and daughter; being trained as a machinist; moving to Buffalo, NY, where he worked as a machinist first for Curtis-Wright and later in maintenance for Roswell Park Memorial Hospital; only telling his daughter part of his story; and how it’s important for the younger generation to know and not to forget.
    Interviewee
    Mitchell Falenski
    Interviewer
    Mrs. Toby Back
    Date
    interview:  1990 July

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    1 videocassette (VHS) : 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
    Falenski, Mitchell.

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    Toby Ticktin Back of the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo conducted the interview with Mitchell Falenski with the cooperation and support of WIVB-TV in Buffalo, NY. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Oral History branch received copies of interviews from the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo from 1990 - 1993. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives received the collection by transfer from the Oral History branch in February 1995.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:08:16
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn511775

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