In a letter to H. Michelson, the author, a former inmate of the Kaiserwald and Strasdenhof, describing atrocities committed by Kapo Hans Bruns (Kaiserwald and Strasdenhof), Dering, commandant of Strasdenhof. SS-guard Danskop (Riga Ghetto), and SS-men Schuller and Hans Hoffmann (Magdeburg camp).

Together with about 3,000 other Polish Jews the young locksmith was interned at Weresyn labour camp where he saw atrocities and murders. Ill and weak, he was allowed to return to Czenstochow after his family had paid (through the Jewish Council) a considerable ransom to the SS.

This report includes details of persecution and circumstances in the Ghetto, including the looting of two synagogues in December 1941. Imprisonment and torture of his brother, discharged on a large ransom, after four weeks. The evacuation of 55,000 Jews in September 1942 (p.2), among them his parents and eight of their children, who all perished at Treblinka (p.2-4).

Work at Hasag, Peltzer until January 1943. From March 1943 he was at KZ Blizin near Skarzÿsko-Kamienna; epidemic typhoid fever; in September 1944 the author was sent to Auschwitz. The atrocities of the German Kapos (p.3). Life and work in the Camp. Death march to Mauthausen 18 January 1945, KZ Gusen, Messerschmidt; the especially cruel mass murder of 700 Jewish labourers in February 1945 (p.4).

At the liberation of the about 1,500 survivors on 8 May 1945, they got plenty of food from which many of them died as they were no longer accustomed to eat well and enough. Since January 1949, the author has been living in Australia.

When the Tiso regime in Slovakia introduced anti-Jewish laws, Bleich and his brother had to leave high school and attend a Jewish school. Their father’s business was aryanized. On 7 April 1942 Bleich, then aged 17, and his younger brother were arrested by the Hlinka Guard and were sent to Poprad and from there to Auschwitz. The account reports particularly vividly and with many details the unspeakable horrors of that camp. At first Bleich was allocated to road work, later to the building of the crematorium and the Buna works. Atrocities, suicides of the prisoners and murders by the Kapo were daily occurrances. When prisoners, Bleich among them, reported sick, they were given fatal injections or sent to the extermination block 7. Miraculously, Bleich was spared, although twice the lorries to take the victims to the gas chambers, halted in front of the block. Due to starvation and excessive work Bleich became one of the Muselmänner.

His brother Eugen also eventually came to Block 7, and after some time Bleich was told that all the inmates had been gassed. Caused by utter lack of sanitation and vermin, typhoid and boils spread and killed hundreds. When the epidemics endangered also the SS. extensive delousing operations were carried out, but the interminable roll-calls and inspections gave renewed chances for brutalities. In 1943 Bleich was ordered to peel potatoes. As he ate the raw peels, he contracted dysentery and skin diseases and lost this coveted job. He was sent back to building work and collapsed.

In March 1943 he accidentally met a friend, Meyer Mittelmann, who worked in the “Canada” Commando, and due to the energetic efforts of this man and despite many obstacles, Bleich was given medical care, some food and eventually a job in Mittelmann's commando, where he worked until August 1943 and enjoyed the various advantages involved. During that time with the Aufräumunskommando Bleich recalls the arrival of 2 transports: all the 3,000 prisoners of one were suffocated, while the 1,200 prisoners of the second were gassed immediately. Finally B. could not stand the handling of corpses any longer, and in August 1943 he volunteered for work in Warsaw on the site of the old ghetto. During their work, prisoners found hundreds of corpses, but also quantities of goods and valuables.

When the Russians approached, the camp was evacuated, the ill and weak prisoners were shot, the others had to march in the summer heat without water, and the SS shot anyone trying to quench his thirst. In Silesia they were crammed into cattle trucks; many of the prisoners went almost mad with thirst. Dachau was in a state of liquidation, the prisoners stayed there only for 2 weeks and proceeded to Ampfing. They worked on an underground factory and lived in underground huts. When Germany collapsed, an order was given to shoot all inmates, but the commandant of Ampfing did not obey this order and send the prisoners on yet another transport which led them to the liberating American army. After short periods in Munich under American care, at his home town and in the DP Camp Feldafing, Bleich married and emigrated to Australia.

A report on three interviews given on 12, 13 and 18 January 1956. Mr Mannheimer and his family were evacuated from their town on the Czech border, in November 1938 and went to Ungar-Brod. From there they were transported to Theresienstadt on 28 January 1943. One thousand were sent on to Auschwitz after a selection made with the help of the Jewish administration who assisted the Gestapo; about 800 of them directly taken to the gas-chambers (p.2). Icy cold bath, two hours standing in the frost; three weeks’ quarantine (p.3).

Forced labour. Atrocities. SS Sturmführer Dr. Mengele (p.4). Fate of sick people (p.4-6). Kapos (p.4-6, 10). Executions (p.6-7). Experiments and sterilisation (p.6). Labour in the Warsaw Ghetto. Lagerältester Walter Wawrziecziniak (p.8, 10). Typhoid fever, death rate 80% (p.9-10); suggestion sent to Berlin headquarters, to liquidate the camp by shooting all internees was declined twice. (p.10-11). Statistics regarding the dead (p.11). Lublin (p.11).

March to Kudno; horrible transport to Dachau (p.12). Aktion; deportation to Dachau of former members of Geverkschafte and SPD who had been arrested and released, in 1934. Arrival of former high officers from Italy (p.12). Karlsfeld camp near Dachau (p.13). Baufirma Sager & Allach Worner; Kommandoführer Jensch set his dog at the workers (p13). Muhldorf camp; Isolier lager Kaurfering near Landsberg. Lagerkommandant Eberle (p.14).

Evacuation of camp; casualties through bombs; the intention to take the transport to Kochel and have the prisoners killed there by the SS was frustrated through their liberation near Tutzing, on 30 April 1945. Four weeks at Feldafing; return to Czechoslovakia (p.15).

In 1940, the author was arrested at Sosnowitz, a small town in Poland evacuated in 1943.

A skilled worker at various forced labour camps, at Auschwitz he could not go on witnessing the horrible circumstances of the camp (p.2-5); vermin; epidemics (p.6); he managed to be sent to Warsaw in summer 1943 (p.5-7). People found alive under the ruins of the Ghetto were shot (p.7). Death march of 4,000 (p.7-9). Dachau, Arbeitslager Muehldorf, high death-rate. In April 1945, he was sent on an aimless transport for eight days; bombed; many casualties; at Seeshaupt, Starnberger See, he was liberated by the Americans who gathered at the train the whole population to show them this example of German civilisation (p.10).

When the Nazi prosecution began in his small native town in Hrubieszow, Poland, Mr Dichter was ten years old. In 1941, his uncle was imprisonned for kosher slaughtering. 8,000 Jews were marched a hundred miles through the snow towards the near Russian border; 3,000 did not die on the way; they were driven over the frontier, machine gunned or sent back by the Russians, the rest shot by the SS (p.1-2). Sokal Ghetto contained abt.10,000 displaced Jews. As he did not look Jewish, the boy became the go-between for the about 300 men working for the Germans at Hrubieszow and their relations at Sokal.

Budzin (p.3-4). Jewish camp commander Stockmann under SS Lagerkommandant Veiks, an evil sadist. Abraham and others saved their lives once, hiding in the copper kettles of the kitchen. The guards were Ukrainian, committing acts of atrocity of the most appalling cruelty, much worse than the Germans.

Transport to Majdaek in 1943 (р.4); all Jews being liquidated, there were only 2,000 prisoners at the time: Russians or Germans. Conditions were much better here although once, 500 Poles, a whole village, were shot dead as a reprisal.

Transferred to #Auschwitz, he found the treatment by the SS worse than anywhere.

In the winter of 1944, many prisoners died of suffocation on the transport to Mauthausen in Austria. The Lagerälteste was a communist, the “Kapos“ communists and criminals; they drowned the Jewish policemen who had ill-treated the prisoners.

Forced labour in anti-aircraft factory near Leipzig (p.5-6). Kind German boss. In 1945, via Leitmeritz to Theresienstadt (p.6). Incarcerated there until 8 May.

The Russians treated them well, offered to take them to Moscow, but most of them preferred to go to England with a view to get to Palestine, later.

When the Nazis entered his native town in Hungary and arrested his father, Mr Heimler went into hiding as a patient in the mental department of the hospital. Every night he escaped and visited his bride in the ghetto (p.1). Finally they got married. The Hugarian Gendarmerie was worse than the German SS (p.2). Horrible transport to Auschwitz (p.2-3). Gypsies. Brutal Jewish foremen (p.3). Buchenwald (p.4-5). Danish policemen (p.4). Transport ‘Schwalge’ to Berga-Elster. Hostile German population; helpful Czechs (p.5). Camp Troeglitz with I.G. Farben factory producing artificial petroleum (p.4).

On 19 March 1944, the Nazis occupied Budapest and, after a very short time, the terror of chasing, looting, humiliating the Jewish population was spread all over Hungary. The authoress lived at Pécs, a town with a community of 6,000 Jews. Together with her husband and their eighteen-year-old son she had to move into a small kitchen at the Ghetto; but soon all men had to join labour companies, and the rest of the Hungarian Jews (apart from those at Budapest) were evacuated by rail to destinations unknown. The Pécs Ghetto was the last to be emptied (7 July 1944). Brutal ill-treatment; horrible conditions on transport; doors opened only once in three days and two nights, in order to take out the corpses. Atrocious proceedings at arrival at Auschwitz. Appalling conditions of life. Arrival at Auschwitz of a great number of Christian Poles, most of whom were gassed. Transport to Ravensbruck and on to a small Labour Camp at Reinickendorf near Berlin; work at Argus aircraft factory until the end of January 1945. Digging trenches; frost, starvation, nutrition-edema, atrocities, cruel punishment.

In April 1945, confusion started to be obvious. March to Oranienburg, KZ already in a chaotic state. Escape & liberation. Three months at a Russian quarantine camp at Landsberg.

In August, back to Pécs, reunited with husband & son. The family left Hungary in October 1956, the authoress & her husband have jobs in London, their son lives abroad.