Testimony of Joseph Kapel, born in Radom, Poland, 1926, regarding his experiences in the Radom Ghetto and as a forced laborer in camps in Poland and Germany

Testimony of Joseph Kapel, born in Radom, Poland, 1926, regarding his experiences in the Radom Ghetto and as a forced laborer in camps in Poland and Germany German occupation of Radom followed by the arrival of SS and SA units and the security police, 08 September 1939; kidnapping of Jews to forced labor accompanied by beatings and torture; confiscation of his father's furniture and carpentry store and the appointment of a non-Jewish trustee, a Volksdeutsche man who ran the business on behalf of the German authorities; establishment of two ghettoes in Radom - the small ghetto and large ghetto; murder of individual Jews; deportations to camps; "Aktion", April 1942; labor in a weapons factory in Radom in a labor camp on Shekolna Street; deportation to Blizin camp; murder of inmates by the camp commander and his assistant; deportation to Auschwitz, early January 1944; receives inmate number B-2324; camp life in block 8; labor in a Kommando that repairs railroad tracks; underground activities to supply explosive material to the Sonderkommandos; explosion of the crematoria during the Sonderkommando Uprising, October 1944; deportation to Fuenfteichen camp after the Uprising; transfer to Flossenburg camp; death march to Dachau, along with Czech inmates; liberation by the US Army, March 1945. Travel to Prague; visit to Poland after the war; antisemitism in Poland; return to Czechoslovakia; sets sail to Eretz Israel and aliya attempt; encounter with British solders; detention in Cyprus; aliya to Eretz Israel, 1946; enlists in the Palmach; participation in Israel's War of Independence as an IDF soldier.