Testimony of Chaim Orszanski, born in Bialystok, Poland, 1928, regarding his life in the Bialystok Ghetto and in camps in Germany

Testimony of Chaim Orszanski, born in Bialystok, Poland, 1928, regarding his life in the Bialystok Ghetto and in camps in Germany 

Testimony of Chaim Orszanski, born in Bialystok, Poland, 1928, regarding his life in the Bialystok Ghetto and in camps in Germany 

Original 3 pages/frames 

Testimony of Chaim Orszanski, born in Bialystok, Poland, 1928, regarding his life in the Bialystok Ghetto and in camps in Germany Occupation of Bialystok, 26 June 1941; riots and the burning of 28 city streets; witness works as a housepainter for an SS unit; abuse of inmates; establishment of the ghetto, 01 August 1943; forced labor under harsh conditions; abuse of the workers by Baranchok, the Polish foreman; transport of Jews to various job assignments by the Judenrat labor office; extermination of the Jews from the areas outlying Bialystok, 01 November 1942; the first"Aktio" in the Bialystok Ghetto, 05 February 1943; in hiding in an attic with his family; discovery of the hiding place by Salomon, a Jewish policeman; concentrating of those who had hidden in the ghetto square; deportation of the Jews in railroad cars; escape from the railroad cars; arrival of the transport in Auschwitz; selection; separation of 65 men from the transport and their transfer to Birkenau; sending the remaining deportees to the gas chambers; sub-human conditions in Birkenau; transfer to Auschwitz six weeks later; labor as a housepainter in the camp; transfer to Jaworzno two months later; labor mining coal and afterwards as a welder until the evacuation of the camp; 17 January 1945; death march by the inmates, falling aside of the sick and the weak; arrival in Blechhammer of approximately 2,000 Jews out of the 5,000 inmates who started the march; approach of the front; mass escape of inmates from the camp; shooting of some of the escapees by the Germans; in hiding in the forests in the area with a number of Jews from Bialystok until liberation by the Red Army, 02 February 1945.