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100 Days to Inspire Respect Aniela recalls singing with her family and performs a melancholy Polish song she remembers from that time.

Frances Zatz describes the Polish Home Army's uprising in Warsaw, Poland in August 1944, which was spurred by the belief that Soviet forces across the Vistula River would liberate them. The Soviet army did not intervene, leaving the Warsaw inhabitants to defend themselves against heavy German fire. Among Warsaw Rising fighters were Polish Jews who survived Warsaw Ghetto Uprising that took place a year earlier. Some of them were prisoners of Gesiowka Concentration Camp liberated by Polish Home Army at the very beginning of the Risin, on August 4th, 1944.

Leon Gersten and some of his family escaped the Frystak ghetto in Poland and hid with a Polish family for almost two years. Leon remembers when police officials entered the home of the Polish family looking for Jews and he recalls how much the family sacrificed.

Jewish Holocaust SurvivorInterview language: PolishAlina Margolis and her friend were hidden under false identity in a Polish family. The family was nationalistic and when the father of this family discovered that his neighbors’ nanny was hiding two little Jewish boys under the terrace he decided to hand them over to the Germans.

Fred Ostrowski talks about the arrest and deportation of Jews of Polish origin from Germany to Poland on October 28, 1938. He remembers the journey from his hometown, Essen, Germany, to Zbaszyn, a border town in Poland. He relates that he and his mother were placed in the home of a Polish family shortly after their arrival Zbaszyn and notes that his father was in Lódz, Poland, at the time.  

Jewish Holocaust Survivor Interview language: Spanish

Jewish Holocaust SurvivorInterview language: PolishStella's father was responsible for collecting dead bodies from the streets in the Cracow ghetto during WWII. When Stella’s grandfather died a natural death in the ghetto, he buried his father, then came home, and shared his feelings about it with the family.

Anna Post remembers pretending to be a polish girl and sneaking into the Warsaw ghetto to visit her cousins for Hanukkah.

Rena Bernstein recalls life after liberation when her family migrated to Italy from Poland. Her father was a doctor at a polish orphanage and the family still experienced anti-Semitism.

After leaving her hometown in Poland to escape Nazi persecution, Ruth remembers observing an atypical Rosh Hashanah in the synagogue of a small Polish town.

Abbie Akst remembers when the Nazis occupied his hometown in Poland in 1939. Abbie reflects on the restrictions imposed onto Polish Jews by the Nazis including wearing a yellow patch.

Homosexual survivor Stefan Kosinski describes his budding romance with a young German soldier, which was taboo at the time because Stefan was Polish. The soldier was kind and generous toward Stefan.

Andrzej Siemiatkowski speaks in Polish about the medical experiements and forced labor he experienced in the Auschwitz camp complex.

Holocaust survivor David Fertig was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1922 to Polish parents. He escaped Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport at age 16 to live with cousins in England, where he joined the Royal Air Force. (02:04:22)

Polish Jewish survivor Martin Becker speaks about meeting the nephew of the great mufti al-Husseini while he studied in Egypt before World War II.Becker's testimony was recorded in 1993 by Jewish Family and Children’s Services’ (JFCS) Holocaust Center in San Francisco.

Jan Karski speaks on being smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto to report on the horrible conditions and the destruction of Polish Jewry. He also recalls how he recently met, just months prior to his interview, a very successful business man, who as a child followed Karski around in the ghetto. 

On the way to show his friend Zygmund the shed where Stefan and Willi would regularly meet, the two encounter three men who had just escaped the Stutthof concentration camp.Foreign words in this video clip:pedo (Polish): derogatory word for a gay person

Ann Monka was born in Lida a small town with a prosperous Jewish population in Poland. Ann and her mother were separated from her brother, sister and father after escaping the Lida Ghetto. Ann remembers when she and her mother hid in the Polish forests with the Bielski Partisans, while the rest of her family escaped deportations by jumping from the Nazi transport trains.

After a short stay in the city's orphanage in Warsaw, Michal Glowiński was taken to a Catholic orphanage run by nuns in Turkowice, where he was hidden along with over thirty other Jewish children. The sisters showed dedication and kindness for hiding Jewish children. This is one of the first Polish-language clips to be added to the IWitness Watch page.

Branko Lustig remembers hearing constant gunshots coming from the barrack next to his where many Polish political prisoners were killed. This is the 56th testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz. 

After his arrest in September 1942, Stefan Kosinski was incarcerated while awaiting his trial. In this clip, he recounts the conditions in the jail and his memory of seeing his mother out the window of his jail cell keeping vigil. She is also present during his trial before the Nazi court, which sentences Stefan to five years hard labor. Foreign words in this clip:pedo (Polish): derogatory term for a gay personschwul (German): gay, homosexualZuchthaus (German): penitentiary

After his arrest in September 1942, Stefan Kosinski was incarcerated while awaiting his trial. In this clip, he recounts the conditions in the jail and his memory of seeing his mother out the window of his jail cell keeping vigil. She is also present during his trial before the Nazi court, which sentences Stefan to five years hard labor. Foreign words in this clip:pedo (Polish): derogatory term for a gay personschwul (German): gay, homosexualZuchthaus (German): penitentiary

Alex recalls listening to Adolf Hitler's radio addresses before the war. He remembers how Polish Jews living in Germany were expelled from the country.

This downloadable video contains clips from testimonies of Jewish survivors of the Holocaust from the USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive who were born and grew up in the Polish city of Oświęcim, now infamous as the location of Auschwitz camp system created there by the occupying Nazi German administration.

Herman Gottesman describes the forced labor, living conditions and lack of food in Auschwitz-III. Auschwitz III-Monowitz, also called Buna, was located near the Polish town of Monowice and was the last of three Auschwitz camps established in the vicinity of Oswiecim. This is the 21st testimony clip in the series 70 Days of Testimony: Leading up to the 70th Anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz.

Dr. Magda Teter, Professor of History and the Shvidler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, is a scholar of early modern history, specializing in Jewish history, Jewish-Christian relations, cultural, legal, and social history, as well as the history of transmission of historical knowledge in the premodern and modern periods. Dr.

Steve recalls how Jewish kids were harassed at school and Polish kids and Jewish kids played separately.