I Kept My Promise
Author | : Jacob Birnbaum |
Publisher | : Jason R. Taylor Associates |
Total Pages | : 293 |
Release | : 1995 |
ISBN-10 | : 9780930622053 |
ISBN-13 | : 0930622057 |
Rating | : 4/5 (53 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: Memoirs of Birnbaum (b. 1922), a Polish Jew who lived in Piotrków Trybunalski and in Dąbrowa Gornicza. In 1942 he was sent to the Anhalt labor camp near Auschwitz, and then to five other labor camps: Markstadt, Ludwigsdorf (a munitions factory), Graditz, Langenbielau, and Faulbrück. At the last two camps he was sent to work in a parachute factory. There, he was sentenced to death by a German civil court for arson, but the SS claimed jurisdiction over him because he was a number and not a person, thereby saving him. He was liberated by the Russians in May 1945 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1949. An appendix on pp. 153-174 relates the fate of the Piotrkow Jews in the Holocaust.