Testimony of Szyje Bartnowski, born in Bialystok, Poland, 1919, regarding his experiences in the Bialystok Ghetto, Pruzana, as a partisan, in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Blechhammer and in other places

Testimony of Szyje Bartnowski, born in Bialystok, Poland, 1919, regarding his experiences in the Bialystok Ghetto, Pruzana, as a partisan, in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Blechhammer and in other places 

Testimony of Szyje Bartnowski, born in Bialystok, Poland, 1919, regarding his experiences in the Bialystok Ghetto, Pruzana, as a partisan, in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Blechhammer and in other places 

Original 4 pages/frames 

Testimony of Szyje Bartnowski, born in Bialystok, Poland, 1919, regarding his experiences in the Bialystok Ghetto, Pruzana, as a partisan, in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in Blechhammer and in other places Deportation from the Bialystok Ghetto to Pruzana with his family, October 1941; life in Pruzana until December 1941; escape into the forests in Bialowieza with two Polish Communists; joins a Soviet partisan battalion; works at providing clothing from the Pruzana Ghetto to the partisan battalion with help from the Judenrat; move back to the ghetto when he contracts typhus; deportation of the Jews from the Pruzana Ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau in closed railroad cars, 28 January 1943; arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, 01 February 1943; selection; transfer into the camp of 300 of the 4,000 Jews who arrived there; transfer of the rest of the Jews to the gas chambers; deaths of 150 out of the 300 Jews from exhaustion, hunger and beatings; camp life including labor building cabins for the SS; murder of Jews in the gas chambers; labor in Block 10 in which medical experiments were performed on women from the Netherlands and Greece, early 1943; labor with a group of Poles repairing the crematorium in Mauthausen; murder of nine Poles by hanging; transfer in a Red Cross car to the Auschwitz clinic after contracting typhus; transfer with the building commando from Birkenau to forced labor in Blechhammer, summer 1944; names of the Jews in the camp; escape from the camp; help from a German family to escapees including providing food, clothing and money for them; [move to Katowice;] meeting with Binyamin Levitzki, the Jew, who lived on the Aryan side of Katowice using false documents; escape to Sosnowiec; escape to Bendzin; in hiding in Bendzin with his Soviet friend; approach of the Front; entry of the Red Army into Bendzin; encounters Dr. Franz from Auschwitz who sent Jews and Soviets to their deaths; hands Dr. Franz over to Red Army soldiers; imposition of the death sentence on Dr. Franz by the soldiers; enlists in the Red Army; move to Auschwitz with his military unit; help to sick inmates who remained in Auschwitz; capture of three SS men; hands the SS men over to the Red Army; liberation of Mauthausen by his unit.