Testimony of Shmuel Bloch, born in Plzen, Czechoslovakia, 1926, regarding his experiences in Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and on a death march

Testimony of Shmuel Bloch, born in Plzen, Czechoslovakia, 1926, regarding his experiences in Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and on a death march Childhood before the war; German occupation of the Sudetenland, 1938; drafting of his father and other family members to serve in the Czech Army; German occupation, March 1939; murder of the community leaders; abuse; confiscation of property; ant-Jewish legislation; deportation to Theresienstadt with help from community leaders and youth movement members; cultural life in the camp with the encouragement of the community leaders; orchestra, performances, geography of Eretz Israel and its poems and songs; arrival of approximately 5,000 refugee children from Poland; camp institutions: laundry, kitchens, clinics and bakery; forced labor; coal mines and planting forests; hunger; crowding; transports to Poland; labor in a factory repairing railroad cars; death march; Aliya to Israel, 1949; absorption and rehabilitation.