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Name
Born:
N/A
Place of Birth:
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Date of Interview:
01/11/90
Place of Interview:
Interviewed by:
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INTERVIEW:
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Born:
00/00/0000
Place of Birth:
Gorlice
Institution:
<partnerName>
Collection:
Unrestricted - Fortunoff Video Archive
Date of Interview:
01/11/90
Interviewed By:
Elliot Perry
Interview Summary
Videotape testimony of Harry B., who was born in Gorlice, Poland in 1929, one of five children. He recalls his family's affluence; German bombardment; escaping to Jasło; his father and oldest brother boarding a train which left before the rest had boarded; returning home; ghettoziation; a Gestapo shooting his brother; a friend on the Judenrat convincing the Gestapo not to touch the rest of the family; deportation of all Jews in 1941; remaining behind to clear bodies (he never saw his mother or siblings again); transfer to Płaszów; a privileged position caring for the Kommandant and his family; sharing extra food; his bar mitzvah; a Ukrainian guard saving him from execution when Amon Goeth became Kommandant; public hangings and mass shootings; transfer to Skarżysko; slave labor in a munitions factory; transfer to Sulejow, then Częstochowa; slave labor in HASAG/Pelzery; transfer to Buchenwald, then Rehmsdorf in winter 1945; a death march to Theresienstadt; friends assisting when he was sick; liberation by Soviet troops; visiting Prague; registering to go to England; living in a group home in Windermere; close bonds with the other youths; learning his father and brother had survived in the Soviet Union; visiting relatives in London, then his father and brother in Germany; remaining in England (his father and brother emigrated to Israel); marriage, and raising a family. Mr. B. discusses his luck in surviving; sharing his story with his children; pervasive painful memories; and his sense that five year's experience was fifty.
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