Description
Object description
Polish Jewish inmate in Warsaw Ghetto, 10/1940-5/1943; inmate in Majdanek Concentration Camp and Skarzysko-Kamienna Labour Camp, Poland, 5/1943-1/1945, Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Germany, 1/1945-4/1945 and Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, Czechoslovakia, 4/1945-5/1945
Content description
REEL 1 Background in Warsaw, Poland, 1929-1939: family circumstances; education; father's business; story of how brother Gerald was invited to work with uncle in GB; question of being insulated from anti-Semitism; languages spoken; family's attitude towards Adolf Hitler. Aspects of period as schoolchild in Warsaw, Poland, 9/1939-10/1940: bombing of family home, 9/1940; reasons for Jews volunteering for 'work in the east'; initial sight of Germans; character of Nazi regime.
REEL 2 Continues: Recollection of period as inmate in Warsaw Ghetto, Poland, 10/1940-5/1943: establishment of ghetto, 10/1940; crowded conditions and pressure on resources; story of how sister Henia joined Jewish partisans and disappeared, 1941; attitude to hearing news of extermination camps; impossibility of escaping; question of Polish anti-Semitism; living conditions; problems of keeping children quiet during searches; organisation of ghetto; experiences during Warsaw Ghetto uprising, 1943; character of White Russians serving with German forces; being smoked out of hiding place; removal from Ghetto, 1943; separation from father. Recollections of period as inmate in Majdanek Concentration Camp, Poland, 5/1943-8/1943: selection process and separation from mother.
REEL 3 Continues: impressions of camp; detailing to kitchen and international nature of camp population; kitchen work; clothing; accommodation and living conditions; Appell system; stone carrying work; reasons for suicide cases; lack of friends and coping with camp regime; lack of awareness that Majdanek was an extermination camp; fate of mother; nature of camp regime; character of camp; anxiety to leave camp; witnessing executions; impossibility of escape; reaction to stay in camp. Recollections of period as inmate in Skarzysko-Kaminenna Labour Camp, Poland, 8/1943-1/1945: selection for engineering work; description of camp's three sections and their functions; role as 'soap boy'; attitude of German engineer whom he worked for.
REEL 4 Continues: physical condition of inmates working with chemicals; treatment of Soviet prisoners of war; how privileged prisoners entertained girlfriends from women's camp; social activities in camp; importance of ability to conform; physical condition of inmates and meagre rations; importance of bread; suicides; problems of sabotaging production and escaping; organisation of camp; use of soap as currency; importance of experience in father's foundry in being accepted for engineering work; advance of Soviet Army. Recollections of period as inmate in Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Germany, 1/1945-4/1945: journey to camp, 1/1945; medical treatment for pneumonia received from French inmate; privations; contrast between camp and Polish camps; working parties in Weimar; story of invitation received from retired German general and his wife to their home. Recollections of liberation of Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, Czechoslovakia, 4/1945: character of train journey to camp, 4/1945; arrival at camp and disappearance of guards; care given by Red Cross; problems with feeding after liberation; sight of advancing Soviet Army; take over of camp by Soviet civilian authority; rations after liberation; medical tests required for trip to GB; train journey from Buchenwald Concentration Camp to camp, 4/1945.
REEL 6 Continues: Recollections of period under care of United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in GB, 1945-1948: retaining faith in father's belief that Germany would be defeated; story of meeting brother in GB, 1945; question of not wishing to return to Poland; question of compensation; organisation of journey to GB with group 'The Boys', summer 1945; accommodation in Windermere; problems in changing from food-saving mentality; arrival of brother and his reaction to hearing of his family's suffering; continuing education.
REEL 7 Continues: problems with language; start of training in family firm. Reflections on Holocaust experience: question of being considered an outsider by rest of 'The Boys'; question of impossibility of understanding brutality of Holocaust; question of incomprehension of how Germans could have followed Adolf Hitler; sense of feeling protected by something and how he questioned the existence of God; question of importance of Israel.