Testimony of Reuven Meir Fersztenburg, born in Rajgrod, Poland, 1925, regarding his experiences in the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau and as a forced laborer in the Kaufering camp

Testimony of Reuven Meir Fersztenburg, born in Rajgrod, Poland, 1925, regarding his experiences in the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz-Birkenau and as a forced laborer in the Kaufering camp Family background; move to Lodz; way of life in his home; Shabbat and religious holidays; attends a Yavneh school; the Jewish community; his father's Bund activities; his mother's Zionist movement activities; membership in Gordonia. Occupation of Lodz by the Germans, September 1939; kidnapping of people for forced labor; destruction of the synagogue; yellow badge; disappearance of his father; deportation to the Lodz Ghetto; hunger; establishment of the Judenrat; factories; ghetto resorts (workshops); work in a carpentry factory; deportation of the Jews to Chelmno; Sperre (curfew) in the ghetto; deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau with his family; deaths of people in the boxcar; selection and separation from his mother; roll calls; selection for choosing inmates for labor; transfer to Kaufering, Germany with his brother; distribution of food and treatment by the Kapo; forced labor in the camp; collapse of inmates and their murder; typhus and hospitalization in the clinic; disappearance of his brother; liberation by the United States Army, April 1945. Hospitalization in a military hospital in Landsberg; rehabilitation after the war and membership in an aliya training group; unsuccessful aliya attempt to Eretz Israel via France as part of Aliya Bet; deportation to Cyprus; second aliya attempt to Israel, 1948.