Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Henry Krystal - September 19, 1996

Henry Krystal was born in Sosnowiec, Poland in 1925. Shortly after the Nazi invasion, Henry's brother and then father escaped to the Soviet occupied zone of Poland while Henry and his mother lived in Bodzentyn, Poland. In 1942 Henry was sent to a labor camp and his mother sent to Treblinka where she died. From 1942 until the end of the war, Henry was a member of a labor Kommando sent from place to place, including Starachowice, Bobrek, Birkenau, Siemensstadt and Sachsenhausen. He worked in a factory operated by the Siemens company. At the end of the war he was in the city of Schwerin, in the British occupied zone of Germany. In 1947 Henry immigrated to Detroit, Michigan where he lived with an aunt and uncle, went to school and became a psychiatrist.

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Link to Portraits of Honor Project

1. Pre-War Life
2. Family
3. Religious Life
4. Relations with Non-Jews
5. Outbreak of War
6. Separation of Family
7. German Occupation
8. News of Labor Camps and Round-Ups
9. Deportation of Mother
10. Starachowice
11. Polish Police
12. Labor in Starachowice
13. Recollections of Starachowice
14. Transport to Birkenau
15. Arrival in Birkenau
16. Conditions in Birkenau
17. Labor in Birkenau
18. Death March
19. Sachsenhausen
20. Continuation of Death March
21. Liberation
22. DP Camps
23. Emigration to America
24. Decision to Become a Psychiatrist
25. Coping Mechanisms
26. Talking About Experiences
27. Reflections