United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
folder 1
Consists of one memoir, 114 pages, entitled"An Absence of Closure" by Gustav (Gus) Schonfeld, originally of Munkacevo, Czechoslovakia. He describes his childhood in Munkacevo (Munkacs), his family lineage, and the takeover of Munkacevo, first by the Hungarians in 1939 and later by the Germans in 1944. After the German invasion, Gus's father, Dr. Alexander Schonfeld, a physician, was assigned to the village of Barkaszo, so the family moved, but were deported to Auschwitz shortly thereafter. After a few weeks in Auschwitz, Gus, his father, and some of the male members of his familiy were sent to the destroyed Warsaw ghetto for forced labor collecting building scraps. In August, they were transferred to Dachau, and from there, to Muhldorf. They were liberated by the American Army on April 30, 1945, returned to Czechoslovakia and reunited with Gus's mother, Helena. The family immigrated to the United States in 1946. Gus attended medical school, married and had children, and became the Samuel E. Schechter Professor Emeritus of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri.
"An Absence of Closur"