Testimony of Shlomo Sigmund Weiss, born in Dunajska Streda, Czechoslovakia, 1919, regarding his experiences in Komarom, Banhida, Kisber, the Dunajska Streda Ghetto, Auschwitz and more

Testimony of Shlomo Sigmund Weiss, born in Dunajska Streda, Czechoslovakia, 1919, regarding his experiences in Komarom, Banhida, Kisber, the Dunajska Streda Ghetto, Auschwitz and more Home life; annexation to Hungary, 1938 [name of town changed to its Hungarian name, Dunaszerdahely]; displays of antisemitism; cancellation of family business license; house searches; economic difficulties. German occupation, 1939; locking up Jews in a cellar, beatings and interrogations about valuables; hiding of the family valuables; draft and deportation to a labor camp in Komarom, 1942; escape during : Hanukkah [November-December 1942], capture and imprisonment for two weeks as punishment; transfer to the Banhida labor camp; camp life including forced labor; transfer to the Kisber labor camp; camp life including laying of train tracks; transfer back to Komarom; transfer home [the Dunajska Streda Ghetto], May 1944; ghetto life; concentration of the Jews in the synagogue; deportation to Auschwitz on a freight train, 16 June 1944; absorption in the camp including beatings; receiving striped [inmate's] clothing and Star of David badge on garment number 79777; deportation by train to the Allach labor camp near Dachau; absorption in the camp including being registered as an inmate; forced labor; Yom Kippur fast [27 September 1944]; hospitalization; Jewish physicians in the hospital; visit of SS men in the Dachau hospital [?]; giving assistance to the rabbis; being detained while taking food without permission; Russian and French POWs in the Allach camp; Rabbi Klein's sermon every Sunday morning; trade in cigarettes; air-raids by the Allied forces; liberation, May 1945. Life in a US camp; return home; displays of antisemitism; detention in a Bratislava jail, 1949; meeting with aliya emissaries; revocation of Czech citizenship; aliya to Israel, 1949. Addition to the interview with Mr. Sigmund Weiss (recorded via a telephone conversation with Mr. Weiss as per his request after taking his testimony): There were 9,000 residents in Dunajska Streda of whom 7,000 were Jews; return of about 400 Jews after the Holocaust; there had been a yeshiva in the city with 30 students; emigration of the students with Rabbi Moshe Nushles to the United States, 1946; death of witness' sister, Zeldi (Weiss) Krausz and her two children who were deported to Auschwitz in a transport from Papa two weeks after [the deportation from] Dunajska Streda, 1944; offer of one million pengo to the German Army by the Judenrat to prevent the deportation; refusal of the Germans of the Judenrat offer; the hanging of Miraly Herzfeld; attitude of the rabbis [?], stay of Rabbi Anshel Katz with his son in Eretz Israel; wish of the witness' mother to give assistance to Eretz Israel [?] since her brothers were already in the country, 1938; statement by the rabbi that the situation in Eretz Israel is difficult; rabbis ignoring the subject of the extermination of the Jews due to lack of information about Auschwitz, 1944; Malca Zonenberg, daughter of the ritual slaughterer, in hiding in the storeroom; her capture as she walks out into the street due to being informed on by non-Jews.