About 5,000 Jews held by the Germans in the notorious death camp at Oswiecim, Poland survived as a result of the rapid advance of the Red Army which liberated the territory where the camp was situated, it was reported today by the first Jewish survivor to reach here from Oswiecim.
The survivor, 20-year-old, Isaas Leibowitz from Tatshovo, in the Carnathian section of Czechoslovakia, was deported, together with all Jews of the town, to Oswiecim last May when Carpathia was under Hungarian occupation. The number A-16311, by which he was known in the Oswiecim camp, is tattcoed on his forearm.
“When the Russian Army was advencing towards Oswiecim,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “The camp administration rushed the crematories from the camp into the interior of Germany in order not to leave any trace of their crimes. At the same time, they executed about 600 Jews who were working at the ovens cremating the bodies of tens of thousands of Jews and who could have told how in September alone the Germans burned alive 20,000 Jews in the Oswiecim camp.”
Many of the Jews whom the Germans could not burn alive because they rushed the crematories to Germany, were transported to the concentration camp at Althammer and to other camps in the German interior, as soon as it became obvious that the Russian armies would soon reach Oswiecim, Leibowits said. It was in one of these camps that he found his brother, Marton, who was among a group of Jews “evacuated” from the Birkansu extermination camp, where his brother witnessed the cremation by the Nazis of 2,800 Jewish children. He was liberated on January 28, when the Russian Army took Althammer.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
