Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Henry Krystal - September 19, 1996

Contents

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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  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

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