Testimony of Hirsh Altusky
Testimonies to come
Id no. 1990.V.27, Testimony, English
May 23 1990, Colditz, Germany, Warsaw, Bohemia, Poland, Skarzysko, Terezin, Landsberg, Czestochowa, Majdanek, Theresienstadt, Buchenwald
Created by: Hirsh Altusky
Videotape testimony of Hirsh Altusky ne Hirsch Altuski, born in Warsaw, Poland in 1914. He recalls his large, extended family; their affluence; attending Jewish schools; participating in a Zionist group; anti-Semitic harassment at university; German invasion in September 1939; ghettoization; his family remaining together due to their affluence; hiding in a bunkers during roundups; being discovered; deportation to Majdanek; separation from his mother and sister; remaining with his father and brother; slave labor; encountering his sister and learning his mother had been killed; the deaths of his brother and father; transfer to Skarzysko, then Czestochowa; help from a friend from Warsaw; transfer to Buchenwald, then Colditz; a death march to Terezin; liberation by Soviet troops; traveling to Landsberg displaced persons camp with bricha; marriage; his daughter's birth; working in the camp administration; visits by Ben-Gurion and Leonard Bernstein; shipping ORT school equipment to Israel when the camp was closing; and emigration to the United States in 1949. Mr. Altusky discusses learning his sister perished in Auschwitz; pervasive painful memories and nightmares; involvement in survivor and commemorative events in the United States; and trips to Poland and Israel. He shows photographs and documents. 3 videorecordings (55 min.; 2 hr., 53 min.; and 1 hr., 57 min.)
