Testimony of Emil Schwimmer, born in Uzhorod, Czechoslovakia, 1927, regarding his experiences in the Uzhorod Ghetto, Auschwitz, labor camps, on a death march and more

Testimony of Emil Schwimmer, born in Uzhorod, Czechoslovakia, 1927, regarding his experiences in the Uzhorod Ghetto, Auschwitz, labor camps, on a death march and more Childhood in Uzhorod, attends a Talmud Torah, Hamizrachi movement. Annexation to Hungary; drafted for forced labor, late 1938; anti-Jewish legislation; German occupation ; deportation to the Uzhorod Ghetto under guard by Hungarian gendarmes, March 1944; deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau; tattooing of an inmate number on his arm; departure for the Eintrachthuette camp and digging trenches; transfer to the Koenigshuette labor camp to labor in a cannon factory under guard by SS soldiers; transfer to Mauthausen, January 1945; hunger; cannibalism; death march to a forest in Gunskirchen; escape of the Germans and entry of the US Army. Witness is cared for by captured German officers guarded by US Army soldiers; transfer to Linz, Austria, to the Soviet Zone; from there to Vienna; registration with the Joint Distribution Committee; return to Uzhorod and his family home which had been looted; move to Prague; from there to a DP camp in Zeilsheim; to a kibbutz in preparation for aliya to Eretz Israel in cooperation with Bericha; aliya to Eretz Israel on the illegal immigrant ship, "Hachayal Ha'ivri", 1946