Testimony of Avigdor Fish, born in Oswiecim, Poland, 1925, regarding his experiences in detention in the Jaroslaw monastery, Auschwitz, the Sosnowiec Ghetto, Gleiwitz and other places

Testimony of Avigdor Fish, born in Oswiecim, Poland, 1925, regarding his experiences in detention in the Jaroslaw monastery, Auschwitz, the Sosnowiec Ghetto, Gleiwitz and other places Life before the war; witness's grandfather is the principal of "Safa Brura", a Hebrew high school in Tarnow supported by Baron Hirsch; his mother is a teacher; his father is a mechanic; Bnei Akiva activities; meeting with Jewish refugees deported from Germany; attends the Hebrew high school. Outbreak of the war, 1939; displays of antisemitism; escape to the Soviet Union; return to Tarnow; German shelling; escape to Jaroslaw; detention in the monastery; escape to Oswiecim; life in hiding in an attic; capture and forced labor removing trash; deportation to Auschwitz; camp life including construction labor and building a military camp; deportation to the Sosnowiec Ghetto, 1940; ghetto life including sanitation labor; Jewish police; transfer to Guntersdorf; transfer to Annaberg; transfer to Buchenwald; transfer to Rogau; camp life including labor logging trees, laying railroad tracks, insulating telephone and telegraph poles; meets with Soviet POWs; incidents of cannibalism; Jewish religious holidays in the camps; attitude of SS personnel and Jewish supervisors; labor in the shoemaking workshop, building ovens and cleaning; meets Hungarian Jews; transfer back to Auschwitz; camp life; death march to Gleiwitz, January 1945; transfer to camps in Germany; escape from a death march; liberation by the US Army. Aliya to Eretz Israel on the ship, "Altalena", 1948.