Szapsia S. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3468) [videorecording] / interviewed by Yannis Thanassekos and Hessel Daalder, April 3, 1995.

Brussels, Belgium : Fondation Auschwitz, 1995.

1 videorecording (6 hr., 47 min.) : col.

French

This testimony is in French.

Videotape testimony of Szapsia S., who was born in Tomaszów Mazowiecki, Poland in 1925 the oldest of four children. He recalls his large, close extended family; antisemitic violence; his father's military draft in 1939; German invasion; briefly seeing his father with other POWs; learning he had been murdered in a mass shooting; his mother sending him to his great aunt; forced labor; a brief visit to his family (he never saw them again); deportation of his aunt and relatives; living with his cousin in a ghetto; a non-Jewish worker providing him with extra food; friendship with two prisoners; sharing food with each other; transfer to Częstochowa; slave labor in a munitions factory; transfer to Buchenwald, then Dora in January 1945; hospitalization; surgery; his friends helping him; transfer to Bergen-Belsen; being shot while stealing food; his friends keeping him alive (he is blind in one eye from the injury); liberation by British troops; living in Celle displaced persons camp, Munich, Feldafing, and Bergen-Belsen; reunion with a cousin; emigration to Brussels in February 1946; marriage in 1948; teaching his son Yiddish, but not about Judaism (he lost his belief when his family was killed); living in Melbourne; and returning to Belgium. He discusses strong bonds with concentration camp friends.

June 01, 2002

Szapsia S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3468). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Szapsia S. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3468). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)