Landon Rice Testimony 2

Joseph Morton was born July 11, 1924 in Lodz, Poland.  Joseph’s father was a tailor and made merchandise and his mother was a stay at home mother.  Joseph was the oldest of 6 children.  Joseph’s whole family lived in a small one bedroom apartment inside one of the ghetto’s that the German’s set up.  His family used to call themselves Jewish and practice holidays, but he would say they weren’t extremely religious. 

            Joseph lived in a Jewish neighborhood. Soon after the war started, troops marched through his neighborhood and took it over.  Morton always tried to stay away from places where Jew’s didn’t live.  He recalls the Germans taking away Jews and torture them.  Morton remembers having to wear a yellow band during the war to distinguish between Jew’s and Gentiles.  Around 1940, he remembers there being around 250,000 people in the ghetto.  And around that time, barbed wire was put around the ghetto to isolate the Jews. 

            In 1944, Morton and his family was moved to Auschwitz where he was separated from his mother and sister.  At Auschwitz, Morton remembers sharing one can of food with two people.

            After about two weeks, Morton was moved to a concentration camp so he can work for the Germans.  In 1945, caught High Fever and became very sick.  No medication was given to him, but he did survive until liberation where an American soldier took him to a hospital.