{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/nv9959dr63/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Anna G."]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/005/original/Fortunoff-Logo.png?1549333634","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eAnna G. was born on April 3rd, 1929 in Drohobych (Дрогобич, Drochobycz), in what was then eastern Poland and is now in western Ukraine. Her father Solomon S. was a blacksmith, wheelwright and had also owned an auto repair shop, in which inter-city buses were maintained. His family had been in Drohobych for six generations. Anna was a latecomer. She had two older sisters, Matylda (Tyda, born in 1913), Sophia (Soscha, born in 1915) and a brother, Isidor (born in 1921).\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThe family lived in a district with predominantly Ukrainian neighbors. Anna went to a Polish public school, where Jewish children were in the minority. Her mother made sure that she did not take Catholic religious instruction with the other children, and instead financed a private tutor, to whom the other Jewish parents soon sent their children too. Otherwise, the Jewish identity of Anna and her family seems to have found its expression in religious practices less than in tradition. They kept the Jewish holidays, the Jewish dietary laws and they spoke Yiddish.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eAnna remembers winter rides in horse-drawn sleighs, but also family visits to the summer resort of Truskavets (Трускавець, Truskawiec) together with their mother. She was lovingly spoiled by her older sisters, both of whom had married before the war.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eAnna had her first encounters with anti-Semitism in elementary school with a Polish teacher who deliberately held Jewish students back. She even heard the slogan “Jew, go to Palestine” from some fellow classmates. However, she also had some good friends among the non-Jewish children and had a teacher who was on her side. When Anna was in the fourth grade in 1939, the eastern part of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union. Her parents had a difficult time because they belonged to the propertied class. However, anti-Semitic insults had been made illegal by the Soviets .\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eWith the withdrawal of the Red Army in 1941, the situation changed radically in Drohobych. The Germans gave the Ukrainians free hand to plunder Jewish houses and commit murder in the first 24 hours of occupation. However, the family's Ukrainian neighbors placed themselves protectively around Solomon S.'s house, and thus the worst damage for Anna's family was avoided at this time. The family was, however, still at the mercy of further anti-Jewish edicts.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eA ghetto was soon set up and people were picked up to for mass shootings under the guise of “work assignments.” Rumors of gas vans and the Belzec Extermination Camp circulated. Anna's father began to work as a blacksmith for the Germans, acquiring therewith the privilege which allowed the family to continue to live in their house. By late summer 1943, as the Jews were being wiped out in Drohobych, the family remained living in the only Jewish-occupied house outside the ghetto. In fact, the Germans pulled out 42 people during the liquidation of the ghetto who had tried to find shelter in the S. 's house. Anna's father and brother were, as “essential workers”, removed from the transport. Her mother and sister Sophia were, along with Sophia's three-year daughter, deported to Belzec. Anna escaped the deportation because she had been hiding outside the house.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eHer father and brother succeeded in smuggling her unnoticed into a labor camp in Drohobych, where she lived in a closet for eight months. When she was finally discovered by an SS man, she was allowed to continue to live in hiding with his acquiescence. In April 1944, the labor camp was dissolved due to the Soviet advance and inmates were taken to Płaszów Concentration Camp.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eWhile her father and brother continued to work as blacksmiths, Anna marched daily to a knitting mill that produced socks and gloves for the Wehrmacht. She witnessed executions. An SS man was known for setting his German shepherd on prisoners. From the knitting mill, she moved on to the so-called “children's commando,\" in which all prisoners under the age of 16 had been collected. The children's commando worked exclusively in Płaszów Concentration Camp until their deportation to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in the fall of 1944.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eAnna survived the first selection in Auschwitz and was taken to the so-called “model camp” there. She worked in agriculture and maintaining the camp roads. In January 1945, she was taken on a death march. The street was lined with corpses. For four days, she helped a fellow prisoner who could hardly keep up with the line of prisoners because she could barely walk. The remaining survivors were then loaded onto freight trains and sent to Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eA typhus epidemic raged in Bergen-Belsen, and only way to save herself was was to perform forced labor. Anna volunteered and was taken away about a week later, probably to the Venusberg Sub-concentration Camp in Gelenau (Erzgebirge), where she worked for a company manufacturing aircraft parts. She became ill with typhoid fever, but was evacuated and finally liberated in Mauthausen Concentration Camp by the U.S. Army.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eAs soon as her health permitted, she made her way to Poland to find her family. When she learned that Drohobych now lay in Soviet territory, she settled first in Kraków. In Breslau (Wrocław), she found her sister Matylda again and later her brother Isidor found his way there too. The anti-Jewish climate in postwar Poland soon became unbearable, so the sisters decided to go to the West together with some friends.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThey awaited their emigration to America in Bensheim-Auerbach DP Camp in Hesse. Anna used the time to go back to school. Her brother got news that their father had been liberated in Dachau Concentration Camp, but that he had died a short time later in a hospital there.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThe Jewish community of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA finally sponsored Anna and Isidor's emigration. In the United States, Anna was able to complete high school. In Buffalo, New York, she married a man she had met in a DP camp in Germany. The G.s settled in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Anna quit college after two years and trained as a real estate agent, a profession in which she has worked for nearly 40 years.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eToday she is widowed and has three grown children and seven grandchildren. In the 1980s she started to talk about her experiences during the Second World War. Since the death of her husband, she has also shared her experiences with her family. In 1998 she visited, together with a daughter and a granddaughter, her father's grave in Dachau for the first time in the postwar period.\u003c/p\u003e (Abstract)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["https://archiv.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de/en/interviews/za576"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2006-02-02 (Creation)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["G., Anna, 1929-04-03 (Interviewee)","Laub, Dori, 1937-06-08 - 2018-06-23 (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["3 videotapes"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Forced labor (topical)","Video tapes (topical)","Oral histories (document genres) (genre_form)","Women (topical)","Drohobych Forced Labor Camp for Jews (Person or Corporate Body)","Plaszow Concentration Camp (Person or Corporate Body)","Auschwitz Concentration Camp (Main Camp) (Person or Corporate Body)","Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp (Person Or Corporate Body)","Venusberg Sub-Concentration Camp (Person or Corporate Body)","Mauthausen Concentration Camp (Person or Corporate Body)","Bensheim DP Camp (Person or Corporate Body)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Relation"]},"value":{"en":["Anna G. Interview za576. Interview Archive „Forced Labor 1939-1945“. Access at https://archiv.zwangsarbeit-archiv.de/en/interviews/za576 (conforms to)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["za576 (Source Identifier)"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eAnna G. was born on April 3rd, 1929 in Drohobych (Дрогобич, Drochobycz), in what was then eastern Poland and is now in western Ukraine. Her father Solomon S. was a blacksmith, wheelwright and had also owned an auto repair shop, in which inter-city buses were maintained. His family had been in Drohobych for six generations. Anna was a latecomer. She had two older sisters, Matylda (Tyda, born in 1913), Sophia (Soscha, born in 1915) and a brother, Isidor (born in 1921).\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThe family lived in a district with predominantly Ukrainian neighbors. Anna went to a Polish public school, where Jewish children were in the minority. Her mother made sure that she did not take Catholic religious instruction with the other children, and instead financed a private tutor, to whom the other Jewish parents soon sent their children too. Otherwise, the Jewish identity of Anna and her family seems to have found its expression in religious practices less than in tradition. They kept the Jewish holidays, the Jewish dietary laws and they spoke Yiddish.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eAnna remembers winter rides in horse-drawn sleighs, but also family visits to the summer resort of Truskavets (Трускавець, Truskawiec) together with their mother. She was lovingly spoiled by her older sisters, both of whom had married before the war.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eAnna had her first encounters with anti-Semitism in elementary school with a Polish teacher who deliberately held Jewish students back. She even heard the slogan \u0026ldquo;Jew, go to Palestine\u0026rdquo; from some fellow classmates. However, she also had some good friends among the non-Jewish children and had a teacher who was on her side. When Anna was in the fourth grade in 1939, the eastern part of Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union. Her parents had a difficult time because they belonged to the propertied class. However, anti-Semitic insults had been made illegal by the Soviets .\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eWith the withdrawal of the Red Army in 1941, the situation changed radically in Drohobych. The Germans gave the Ukrainians free hand to plunder Jewish houses and commit murder in the first 24 hours of occupation. However, the family's Ukrainian neighbors placed themselves protectively around Solomon S.'s house, and thus the worst damage for Anna's family was avoided at this time. The family was, however, still at the mercy of further anti-Jewish edicts.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eA ghetto was soon set up and people were picked up to for mass shootings under the guise of \u0026ldquo;work assignments.\u0026rdquo; Rumors of gas vans and the Belzec Extermination Camp circulated. Anna's father began to work as a blacksmith for the Germans, acquiring therewith the privilege which allowed the family to continue to live in their house. By late summer 1943, as the Jews were being wiped out in Drohobych, the family remained living in the only Jewish-occupied house outside the ghetto. In fact, the Germans pulled out 42 people during the liquidation of the ghetto who had tried to find shelter in the S. 's house. Anna's father and brother were, as \u0026ldquo;essential workers\u0026rdquo;, removed from the transport. Her mother and sister Sophia were, along with Sophia's three-year daughter, deported to Belzec. Anna escaped the deportation because she had been hiding outside the house.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eHer father and brother succeeded in smuggling her unnoticed into a labor camp in Drohobych, where she lived in a closet for eight months. When she was finally discovered by an SS man, she was allowed to continue to live in hiding with his acquiescence. In April 1944, the labor camp was dissolved due to the Soviet advance and inmates were taken to Płasz\u0026oacute;w Concentration Camp.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eWhile her father and brother continued to work as blacksmiths, Anna marched daily to a knitting mill that produced socks and gloves for the Wehrmacht. She witnessed executions. An SS man was known for setting his German shepherd on prisoners. From the knitting mill, she moved on to the so-called \u0026ldquo;children's commando,\" in which all prisoners under the age of 16 had been collected. The children's commando worked exclusively in Płasz\u0026oacute;w Concentration Camp until their deportation to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in the fall of 1944.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eAnna survived the first selection in Auschwitz and was taken to the so-called \u0026ldquo;model camp\u0026rdquo; there. She worked in agriculture and maintaining the camp roads. In January 1945, she was taken on a death march. The street was lined with corpses. For four days, she helped a fellow prisoner who could hardly keep up with the line of prisoners because she could barely walk. The remaining survivors were then loaded onto freight trains and sent to Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eA typhus epidemic raged in Bergen-Belsen, and only way to save herself was was to perform forced labor. Anna volunteered and was taken away about a week later, probably to the Venusberg Sub-concentration Camp in Gelenau (Erzgebirge), where she worked for a company manufacturing aircraft parts. She became ill with typhoid fever, but was evacuated and finally liberated in Mauthausen Concentration Camp by the U.S. Army.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eAs soon as her health permitted, she made her way to Poland to find her family. When she learned that Drohobych now lay in Soviet territory, she settled first in Krak\u0026oacute;w. In Breslau (Wrocław), she found her sister Matylda again and later her brother Isidor found his way there too. The anti-Jewish climate in postwar Poland soon became unbearable, so the sisters decided to go to the West together with some friends.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThey awaited their emigration to America in Bensheim-Auerbach DP Camp in Hesse. Anna used the time to go back to school. Her brother got news that their father had been liberated in Dachau Concentration Camp, but that he had died a short time later in a hospital there.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eThe Jewish community of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, USA finally sponsored Anna and Isidor's emigration. In the United States, Anna was able to complete high school. In Buffalo, New York, she married a man she had met in a DP camp in Germany. The G.s settled in New Haven, Connecticut, USA. Anna quit college after two years and trained as a real estate agent, a profession in which she has worked for nearly 40 years.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eToday she is widowed and has three grown children and seven grandchildren. In the 1980s she started to talk about her experiences during the Second World War. Since the death of her husband, she has also shared her experiences with her family. In 1998 she visited, together with a daughter and a granddaughter, her father's grave in Dachau for the first time in the postwar period.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"provider":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/005/original/Fortunoff-Logo.png?1549333634","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/207/995/small/ZA576_03_01_sd720p.mp4_1694845850.jpg?1694845851","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107101/file/207995","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 3 - ZA576_03_01_sd720p.mp4"]},"duration":3655.16,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/207/995/small/ZA576_03_01_sd720p.mp4_1694845850.jpg?1694845851","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107101/file/207995/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107101/file/207995/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-fortunoff.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/207/995/original/ZA576_03_01_sd720p.mp4?1694845844","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":3655.16,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107101/file/207995","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[]},{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107101/file/207997","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 2 of 3 - ZA576_03_02_sd720p.mp4"]},"duration":3591.44,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/207/997/small/ZA576_03_02_sd720p.mp4_1694847233.jpg?1694847234","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107101/file/207997/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107101/file/207997/content/2/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-fortunoff.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/207/997/original/ZA576_03_02_sd720p.mp4?1694847227","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":3591.44,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107101/file/207997","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[]},{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107101/file/207996","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 3 of 3 - ZA576_03_03_sd720p.mp4"]},"duration":3078.44,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/207/996/small/ZA576_03_03_sd720p.mp4_1694847113.jpg?1694847115","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107101/file/207996/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107101/file/207996/content/3/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-fortunoff.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/207/996/original/ZA576_03_03_sd720p.mp4?1694847109","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":3078.44,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://fortunoff.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2227/collection_resources/107101/file/207996","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[]}]}