Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Henry Konstam - October 25, 1991

Family

How large was your family?

I was the youngest of six. And then alive are uh, I have one, the oldest, my oldest sister lives in Tel Aviv, Israel. And I have another, a older brother and I... lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. And uh, the three sisters and my parents perished. Uh, they took my parents away and I, as I understand--I wasn't home at the time--but those and they uh, loaded them up with some other elderly people in a truck and they just put a gas pipe in and just killed them all and dumped them.

In the gas van. It was a van.

A van, yeah. And...

Before we get to that, your parents, did they have brothers and sisters?

Dad, yeah, he had sisters, yeah. My mother also had...

So how large would you say the extended family, first cousins, brothers, sisters, grandparents?

Oh they uh, would be probably uh, around a hundred and fifty.

All living in Łódź?

No, they were living in Ozorkow and in Łódź and some other little towns.

And your mother's maiden name, what was her maiden name?

Toronczyk. T-o-r-o-n-c-z-y-k.

Was she from Łódź too?

No, she was in Ozorkow. Ozorkow. She was a, as I say, it was about fifteen miles uh, from there.

So of this maybe, what, a hundred and fifty you would say...

At least.

extended family?

Yeah.

How many do you think survived the war?

As I know, there's just, we are the only survivors.

Of the whole family.

The, the three of us. The three of us.


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