Simcha B. Holocaust testimony (HVT-3343) [videorecording] / interviewed by Nathan Beyrak, May 13, 1992.

Tel Aviv, Israel : Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, 1992.

1 videorecording (3 hr., 41 min.) : col.

Hebrew

This testimony may not be used in any publication without the donor's consent.

Videotape testimony of Simcha B., who was born in Izbica, Poland in 1912, one of six children. He recalls attending public school; working in a pharmacy; serving in the Polish army; moving to Warsaw in 1938; German invasion; returning with his sister to Izbica; one brother fleeing to the Soviet zone; traveling to Volodymyr-Volynsʹkyĭ in the Soviet zone; returning to retrieve his sister; not being able to leave; forced labor cleaning roads; his father's deportation (he never saw him again); hiding during round-ups; his sisters' and mother's deportations; transfer to a labor camp for two months; returning home; deportation with his remaining family to Sobibór; volunteering as a pharmacist with his brother; assisting fellow prisoners; public execution of randomly chosen prisoners after escapes; poisoning a kapo who endangered their escape plans; acquiring and hiding weapons; mass shooting of men whose escape plan was discovered; arrival of a prisoner who was a Soviet officer; his organizing an escape; finding his brother after the escape (hundreds of the escapees were killed); hiding in a forest near Izbica, then with a Polish friend; leaving when warned that members of the AK were looking for them; hiding with another Polish friend; liberation by Soviet troops; return of his other brother from the Soviet Union; traveling to Zamość via Krasnystaw; marriage to a woman he met in Sobibór; arrest by the AK; release by Soviets; his son's birth; his wife, brother and sister-in-law traveling illegally to Germany; joining them; living in Berlin, then Heidenheim displaced persons camps; a visit by David Ben-Gurion; and emigration to Israel. Mr. B. describes life in Sobibór; the arrival of transports including killings on the unloading ramp; and participating in war crimes trials of Sobibór officials, including Gustav Wagner, Karl Frenzel, Franz Wolf, and Hubert Gomerski.

June 01, 2002

Simcha B. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3343). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Simcha B. Holocaust Testimony (HVT-3343). Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library.

Oral histories (document genres)