Testimony of Zvi Stern Steinmetz, born in Masiv, (Czechoslovakia) Romania, 1928, regarding his experiences in the Wisho Ghetto, Jaworzno and Blechhammer camps

Testimony of Zvi Stern Steinmetz, born in Masiv, (Czechoslovakia) Romania, 1928, regarding his experiences in the Wisho Ghetto, Jaworzno and Blechhammer camps Draft of men, including his father, to forced labor to build fortifications in Ukraine; Hungarian occupation; discrimination against the Jews to earn a livelihood; robbery and looting of Jewish owned property; house to house searches and abuse of Jews; German occupation of Hungary, March 1944; ban on Jews from earning a livelihood; concentration of Jews in the villages and their transfer to the Wisho Ghetto; life in severely overcrowded houses; transfer of the Jews in the ghetto to German authority; deportation to Auschwitz, May 1944; selection on the ramp by Josef Menegele; separation from his mother, sister and grandmother; tattooing of number A-6693; transfer to Jaworzno camp; labor building railroad tracks; camp life, drastic deterioration of conditions and abuse by SS men; mass mortality due to malnutrition; evacuation of the camp following the advance of the Red Army front; transfer of the inmates to Blechhammer camp; placement of the inmates in a large warehouse, where the witness meets his brother; the Germans flee before the liberation by the Red Army, spring 1945; hospitalization in Czestochowa; draft to a labor unit by the Red Army; escape from labor. Return to his home town in a Red Army uniform; DP camp life in Austria; meets Jewish Brigade soldiers in Italy; life in an Irgun camp in Italy; illegal aliya to Eretz Israel, 1946.