Testimony of Tzvi Schoenfeld, born in Chust, Czechoslovakia, 1927, regarding his experiences in the Chust Ghetto, Auschwitz, Plaszow, Gross, Posen and Zittau

Testimony of Tzvi Schoenfeld, born in Chust, Czechoslovakia, 1927, regarding his experiences in the Chust Ghetto, Auschwitz, Plaszow, Gross-Rosen and Zittau From an Orthodox family, attends a Czech elementary school and "heder"; his father makes aliya to Eretz Israel, 1934, and his return to Czechoslovakia. Annexation to Hungary, 1938; Aryanization of Jewish businesses; meeting with and assistance to Polish Jewish refugees; disbelief regarding information about fate of the Jews; draft of his father to labor battalions in Ukraine, 1942; receiving information of his death from typhus; deportation of Chust Jews to the ghetto, Pesach (April) 1944; deportation to a brickmaking factory after two and a half months; deportation to Auschwitz; selection; murder of his mother and his two brothers; disbelief in the extermination perpetrated in Auschwitz despite the presence of the actual crematoria; transfer to the Plaszow camp as a builder; treatment by a Jewish Kapo from Poland; transfer to Gross-Rosen, Germany; treatment by the Czech Jewish Block Elder (Alteste); work in the I. G. Farben factory; manufacture of shells for about eight months; transfer to Zittau; labor in a factory producing airplane parts; treatment by one of the German managers; liberation by the Red Army. Losing consciousness and rescue by a Russian Jewish officer; return to Czechoslovakia, aliya to Israel as a member of the Czech Brigade, 1948.