Kestenberg Archive

HT, an only child, was born in Warsaw in 1931 or 1932. His father was a cardiologist. There was a history of mental illness in his father's family and even before the war HT's father began to exhibit signs of paranoia. He went to Zoppot and Danzig in 1937. Throughout the 1930s he dealt with anti-Semitism. After September 1, 1939, bombs began to fall on the city. HT sat in the middle of the apartment rather than the cellar because there was the fear of being buried alive. The family was forced to start wearing arm bands in 1941. They were in Umschlagplatz in 1942. ; In 1943, he was deported to Majdanek with his parents. There he was separated from his mother and girlfriend and despite trying to separate himself from his father, the two went together to Budzyn. In Budzyn, HT's father tormented him, convincing him that he was not worthy to survive and that he would die soon. As a result the other doctors who worked with HT's father in the sick bay also treated him badly. After Budzyn was liquidated in 1944, HT and his father spent a number of months in Radom in 1944. They were then taken to Auschwitz via Tomaszów Radomski. In Auschwitz, HT passed a selection by Mengele and was sent to Germany, to Vaihingen where he worked digging for an underground factory. He avoided a death march to Buchenwald a few days before the liberation because he was ill with typhus. He was liberated by French colonial soldiers in April 1945. Due to encephalitis, he suffered some memory problems. ; HT recounts the revenge and violence taken against the Germans by the French soldiers and surviving Jews. He moved with his father around Germany (living for a time in Nuremberg and Stuttgart). When his father decided to go back to Poland, he left HT in a children's camp run by the UNRA called Aglasterhausen. After two years, around the age of 16, he came to Newark to stay with his father's brother. The family kicked him out of the house, and he stayed in an orphanage for a year before moving to New York. He went to France in 1961 and got his masters. ; After the liberation, HT was obsessed for a long time that the Germans would return. He was involved in beating to death a Nazi who had beaten him and in bringing about the execution of a Nazi doctor. Although he is angry at the Germans, he feels more anger towards Jews who did not unite to support each other and especially hatred towards his father. However he now understands that his father was mentally ill.