You searched for: dachau

dachau

| Displaying results 226-250 of 300 for "dachau" |

  • Michal Scislowski

    ID Card

    Michal was one of two children born to Catholic parents living in Siedlce, a large town some 65 miles east of Warsaw. Michal's father was an intelligence officer in the Polish army. Because his duty station frequently changed, the family lived in several towns along the Polish-Soviet border. As a child, Michal enjoyed photography and was active in the boy scouts. 1933-39: Michal's family was living in Wilejka, a town near Vilna, when the Germans attacked Poland on September 1, 1939. The Soviet army…

    Michal Scislowski
  • Erich Schon

    ID Card

    Erich was one of five children born to observant Jewish parents. They lived in Vsetin, a town in Czechoslovakia's Moravia region that straddled the border with Slovakia. Some 70 Jewish families lived in the town of 12,500 persons. There, Erich's family owned a grocery store and operated a sawmill. Erich attended a trade school where he became an expert in lumber and forestry. 1933-39: The Germans kept Erich's family's sawmill operating after they occupied their region in March 1939. Since Erich had a…

    Erich Schon
  • Elias (Elya) Grosmann

    ID Card

    Elias was born in a small town in the hill country of northeastern Slovakia. His family was Jewish, and he grew up in a religious home in which both Yiddish and Hungarian were spoken. His father was a peddler and his mother ran a small general store. Besides attending public schools, Elias received a formal Jewish education and attended Medzilaborce's rabbinical academy. 1933-39: The townspeople were mostly Jewish and worried about Nazi Germany. The German annexation of Austria in March 1938 alarmed them.…

    Elias (Elya) Grosmann
  • David Bergman

    ID Card

    David was born to religious Jewish parents in a small town in Ruthenia, Czechoslovakia's easternmost province, which had been ruled by Hungary until 1918. Located in the Carpathian Mountains, the town was so isolated that news from the rest of the country would arrive by a drummer who would read the news in the town's central square. David's father worked as a tailor and his mother was a seamstress. 1933-39: While David's parents worked, he would be at home having a good time. They had a beautiful home…

    David Bergman
  • Freya Karoline Lang

    ID Card

    An only child, Freya was born to Jewish parents who lived in a small German town in the Rhine River valley. The Langs owned a successful dry goods business. At this time ready-made clothes were still rare in the countryside. Townspeople and local farmers would purchase fabric at the Lang's store and then take it to their tailor or seamstress to be sewn into a garment. 1933-39: When Freya was growing up, the Nazi party was in power. Many Jews left Germany--Grandmother Lang and one of Freya's uncles sailed…

    Freya Karoline Lang
  • Inge Auerbacher

    ID Card

    Inge was the only child of Berthold and Regina Auerbacher, religious Jews living in Kippenheim, a village in southwestern Germany near the Black Forest. Her father was a textile merchant. The family lived in a large house with 17 rooms and had servants to help with the housework. 1933-39: On November 10, 1938, hoodlums threw rocks and broke all the windows of Inge's home. That same day police arrested her father and grandfather. Inge, her mother and grandmother managed to hide in a shed until it was…

    Inge Auerbacher
  • Abraham Lewent

    ID Card

    Abraham was born to a Jewish family in the Polish capital of Warsaw. His grandfather owned a clothing factory and retail store, which his father managed. Abraham's family lived in a Jewish section of Warsaw and he attended a Jewish school. Warsaw's Jewish community was the largest in Europe, and made up nearly one-third of the population of the city. 1933-39: After the bombardment of Warsaw began on September 8, 1939, Abraham's family had little to eat. The stores had been reduced to rubble; they had no…

    Abraham Lewent
  • Rev. Marian Jacek Dabrowski

    ID Card

    Marian was raised by Catholic parents in Niewodowo, a town in Poland's Bialystok Province near Lomza. His family lived there under Tsarist rule until 1918, when Poland regained its independence. Following high school, Marian joined the Capuchin Franciscan Order of Friars. After eight years of study in France and Italy, he returned to Poland to teach philosophy to students of his order. 1933-39: When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Marian was at his monastery near Grodno. They evacuated the…

    Tags: Auschwitz
    Rev. Marian Jacek Dabrowski
  • Adolphe Arnold

    ID Card

    Adolphe was born to Catholic parents in Alsace when it was under German rule. He was orphaned at age 12, and was raised by his uncle who sent him to an art school in Mulhouse, where he specialized in design. He married in the village of Husseren-Wesserling in the southern part of Alsace, and in 1930 the couple had a baby daughter. In 1933 the Arnolds moved to the nearby city of Mulhouse. 1933-39: Adolphe worked in Mulhouse as an art consultant for one of France's biggest printing factories. When he wasn't…

    Adolphe Arnold
  • Pinchas Gerszonowicz

    ID Card

    Pinchas was born into a large family living in the town of Miechow in south central Poland. His father was a machinist and locksmith. Pinchas spent long days studying, either learning Hebrew in the Jewish school or taking general subjects at the public school. He belonged to the Zionist youth organization, Ha Shomer ha-Tsa'ir, and played left wing for a Jewish soccer team. 1933-39: At 13 Pinchas finished school and started work as an apprentice machinist and blacksmith in a building contractor's shop.…

    Tags: Auschwitz
    Pinchas Gerszonowicz
  • Hersh Gordon

    ID Card

    Hersh was born to a Jewish family in Kovno, the capital of independent Lithuania. Hersh's father was a mechanic in a textile factory, and his mother had worked as a hat designer until he was born. The Gordons lived on the first floor of Hersh's grandfather's apartment building. Eight-year-old Hersh was in the third grade at public elementary school. 1933-39: In the summers Hersh and his mother would go to his Aunt Ettel and Uncle Abraham in a small town not far away. They'd take a boat down the river to…

    Hersh Gordon
  • Arthur Menke

    ID Card

    Arthur was born to a Jewish family in Germany's largest port city, Hamburg. His father owned a small factory that manufactured rubber stamps. In the early 1930s, Hamburg was home to the fourth largest Jewish community in Germany, which had numerous social and cultural institutions. 1933-39: By 1935 conditions for Hamburg's Jews were bad. Arthur's family was moved to another part of town and in 1938, the Nazis seized his father's business. On national holidays many German citizens unfurled red, white and…

    Tags: Minsk ghettos
    Arthur Menke
  • Emma Freund

    ID Card

    The second oldest of six children, Emma was raised by observant Jewish parents in a small town in southwestern Germany and they settled in the industrial city of Mannheim after World War I. There she had two children, a son in 1924, and a daughter in 1930. Emma helped her husband in his business. 1933-39: After the Nazis came to power, Emma's husband lost his business. Her sister Linnchen immigrated to South Africa, and the Nazis deported her brother Arthur to Dachau. When the Nazis burned down the local…

    Emma Freund
  • Simcha Perlmutter

    ID Card

    Simcha was one of six children born to a Jewish family in the town of Horochow. His father was a Hebrew teacher. Simcha was an excellent student and after studying at universities in Switzerland, France, and Germany, he became a philosophy professor at the university in Lvov. In the early 1920s he married, and by 1929 he and his wife, Fruma, had two daughters, Tchiya and Shulamit. 1933-39: Simcha was a Zionist and throughout the 1930s he encouraged his Jewish students to emigrate to Palestine [Aliyah…

    Simcha Perlmutter
  • Herman Klein

    ID Card

    Herman was the fourth of eight children born to a religious Jewish family in the small town of Sirma, located near the city of Sevlus. The Kleins had a small plot of land, which they farmed, and they also ran a shoe shop. At age four Herman began attending religious school. When he started public elementary school, he continued his religious lessons in the afternoons. 1933-39: In March 1939, the region of Czechoslovakia in which Herman lived was annexed to Hungary. His teacher at school was replaced by a…

    Herman Klein
  • Moses Rechnitz

    ID Card

    The younger of two children, Moses was born to Jewish parents living in the southwestern Polish town of Bedzin. When he was 7, his family moved to the nearby city of Katowice where his father had a wholesale leather business. The Rechnitzes lived in a three-bedroom, upper-floor apartment on Jordana Street. Moses attended a Polish elementary school and also received religious instruction. 1933-39: In secondary school, Moses was one of the only Jewish pupils. He first encountered antisemitism when a teacher…

    Moses Rechnitz
  • Edit Gruenberger

    ID Card

    Edit was the second of three children born to Hungarian-speaking Jewish parents in the city of Kosice in the southeastern part of Czechoslovakia known as Slovakia. She grew up a Czechoslovak citizen. As a young girl, she attended a Jewish elementary school. Her father was a tailor whose workshop was in the Gruenbergers' apartment. 1933-39: After Edit finished elementary school, she entered secondary school. The language of instruction was Slovak and Jews faced no discrimination until November 1938 when…

    Edit Gruenberger
  • Moishe Krol

    ID Card

    Moishe was born to Yiddish-speaking Jewish parents in Radom. The industrial city was known for its armaments factories in which Jews could not work and for its leather industry in which many Jews did. When Moishe was a teenager, he finished school and apprenticed to become a women's tailor. Moishe earned a certificate enabling him to be a licensed tailor and settled down in Radom. 1933-39: By 1939, Moishe had become a master tailor specializing in women's clothes. He remembers local antisemitic…

    Moishe Krol
  • Bernburg T4 Facility

    Article

    Bernburg was the fifth of six centralized killing centers established by German authorities within the context of the Nazi “euthanasia,” or T4, program.

    Bernburg T4 Facility
  • David (Dudi) Bergman recalls the importance of work for survival in the Plaszow labor camp

    Oral History

    The Germans occupied David's town, previously annexed by Hungary, in 1944. David was deported to Auschwitz and, with his father, transported to Plaszow. David was sent to the Gross-Rosen camp and to Reichenbach. He was then among three of 150 in a cattle car who survived transportation to Dachau. He was liberated after a death march from Innsbruck toward the front line of combat between US and German troops.

    David (Dudi) Bergman recalls the importance of work for survival in the Plaszow labor camp
  • Sandor (Shony) Alex Braun describes how music gave him the strength to survive while imprisoned in concentration camps

    Oral History

    Shony was born to religious Jewish parents in a small Transylvanian city. He began to learn the violin at age 5. His town was occupied by Hungary in 1940 and by Germany in 1944. In May 1944, he was deported to the Auschwitz camp in Poland. He was transferred to the Natzweiler camp system in France and then to Dachau, where he was liberated by US troops in April 1945. In 1950, he immigrated to the United States, and became a composer and a professional violinist.

    Sandor (Shony) Alex Braun describes how music gave him the strength to survive while imprisoned in concentration camps
  • Abraham Lewent describes food shortages after the invasion of Warsaw

    Oral History

    Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

    Tags: Warsaw
    Abraham Lewent describes food shortages after the invasion of Warsaw
  • Abraham Lewent describes conditions in the Warsaw ghetto

    Oral History

    Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

    Tags: ghettos Warsaw
    Abraham Lewent describes conditions in the Warsaw ghetto
  • Abraham Lewent describes conditions in Skarzysko camp

    Oral History

    Like other Jews, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In 1942, as Abraham hid in a crawl space, the Germans seized his mother and sisters in a raid. They perished. He was deployed for forced labor nearby, but escaped to return to his father in the ghetto. In 1943, the two were deported to Majdanek, where Abraham's father died. Abraham later was sent to Skarzysko, Buchenwald, Schlieben, Bisingen, and Dachau. US troops liberated Abraham as the Germans evacuated prisoners.

    Abraham Lewent describes conditions in Skarzysko camp
  • Judith Meisel describes smuggling food as a child into the Kovno ghetto

    Oral History

    Upon her father's death, Judith and her family moved to Kovno. Soon, they were confined to the ghetto, which the Germans formed in 1941. Judith, her mother and sister were deported to Stutthof, where her mother died. Judith and her sister escaped from a death march out of Stutthof. They posed as non-Jews, found farm work and eventual refuge in Denmark. Their brother survived Dachau.

    Judith Meisel describes smuggling food as a child into the Kovno ghetto

Thank you for supporting our work

We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors.