"Surviving the Holocaust with Chutzpah"
Extent and Medium
folder
1
Creator(s)
- Gerhard J. Bochner
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Gerhard Bochner
Gerhard Bochner donated his memoir "Surviving the Holocaust with Chutzpah" to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in September 2011.
Scope and Content
Consists of one memoir, written in 2000 and revised in 2006, entitled "Surviving the Holocaust with Chutzpah" by Gerhard Jitzchak Bochner, originally of Teplice, Czechoslovakia. He describes pre-war life in Teplice moving to Krakow with his sister; reuniting with his parents, whose property was seized after Kristallnacht; the German invasion and occupation in 1939, and moving with his family to Neipolomice in spring 1940 and to Wieliczka in the summer. The family was separated and Mr. Bochner remembers digging mass graves before being deported to a forced labor camp near Rzeszow. He managed to escape the camp and volunteered for labor in Germany, posing as a non-Jew. He was arrested after trying to escape into Switzerland and was imprisoned in Flossenbürg and Dachau as a Polish prisoner. After his liberation from Dachau, he returned to Czechoslovakia, learned he was the only survivor of his family, immigrating to Israel and then to the United States.
Conditions Governing Reproduction
Copyright Holder: Mr. Gerhard J. Bochner
People
- Bochner, Gerhard Jitzchack.
Subjects
- Poland.
- Czechoslovakia.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Poland--Personal narratives.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Czechoslovakia--Personal narratives.
Genre
- Personal Narratives.
- Document