Henryk Mandelbaum

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Henryk Mandelbaum (* 1922 in Olkusz, Poland) is a survivor of the Holocaust. He was one of the prisoners in the Sonderkommando KZ Auschwitz-Birkenau in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp who had to work in the crematory. Only 110 out of 2000 prisoners survived the Sonderkommandos in Auschwitz-Birkenau, of whom only a few are still alive. Mandelbaum committed himself to remembering the Holocaust.

Henryk Mandelbaum was imprisoned as a Polish Jew at the age of 21 years. He fled from the Ghetto Sosnowiec and was reimprisoned on April 22, 1944 in Birkenau.

In contradiction to most of the prisoners, Mandelbaum was not murdered immediately after arrival because he was designated to forced labor in the crematory. He had to carry the corpses of the people who were gassed with Zyklon B, check body orifices for valuables and break out dental gold. In 1944 the capacity of the crematories was to small to burn all the corpses of prisoners killed. Mandelbaum and others had to dig two huge pits then and burn the dead bodies in them. To improve the process they had to pour back the body fat which was collected in small holes in the pit over the top of the pile.

Mandelbaum participated in the rebellion of inmates on October 7, 1944 which was put down quickly by the SS. Afterwards, 451 of the inmates were shot or hanged. This was the third rebellion in a camp after Treblinka (August 2 1943) and Sobibor (October 14 1943).

On a death march in January 1945 he was able to flee. He escaped wearing civilian clothes and hid on a farm for three weeks. After the liberation of Auschwitz he reported himself to the Wahrheitsfindungskommission as an eyewitness.

Today Mandelbaum always lives in Poland. He still wears the number 181 970 on his left underarm. He often travels to the former concentration camp Auschwitz and to Germany to speak about his experiences. Mandelbaum says especially young people should learn what happened in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945: "Man muss das doch alles wissen, man muss doch wissen, wie lange sind die Leute gewesen in die Gaskammer. Man muss wissen, wie lange sie haben gebrennt in die Ofen" ("One has to know it all, has to know, how long the people have been in the gas chamber. One has to know how long they have burned in the ovens").

[edit] References

This article is based on a translation of the German Wikipedia article Henryk Mandelbaum.

[edit] External links

(German) Hans G. Helms: Auschwitz vor Polens EU-Beitritt Junge Welt, 18. Mai 2001
(German) Jürgen Schön: Überleben nur von Tag zu Tag. taz, 20. Dezember 2004
(German) Ausstellung Bildungswerk Stanislav Hantz: NUR DIE STERNE WAREN WIE GESTERN Dreikönigskirche, Dresden, 16. März – 20. April 2006
(French) Sonderkommando.info.