Testimonial #1: Joseph Mortkitz

Joseph Mortkwitz was born 07-11-1924 in Lodz, Poland. He is the son of a tailor father and an artist mother. He is the eldest of 6 children. His family used to live in a one-bedroom apartment in a Jewish neighborhood that was one of the ghettos the Nazis made for during the war. His family used to practice Jewish holidays but they are not really that religious. Two days after the war started in 1939, Germans marched and took over their neighborhood. He recalled seeing the Germans took away people in the neighborhood to torture. He recalled during the war, that they were to wear yellow band to distinguish that they are Jews. He also experienced in 1939 that they get to live with 250,000 people in the ghetto. By 1940, the Germans closed the ghettos by putting barbwires to isolate the Jews. He recalled that in the ghettos, people are dying due to starvation. Before the ghettos were closed, he and his father were reunited after his father’s capture. They were moved in Auschwitz by 1944. He recalled being separated from his mother and sister since female Jews are separated from the male Jews. In Auschwitz, he experienced sharing one can of food with two people. After two weeks in Auschwitz, Joseph and his father were transferred to another concentration camp. There, they were to work for the Germans. He recalled that the Germans wake them up early in the morning and let them roll over the snow before they go to work. By 1945, he got a high fever, unfortunately, there were no medications available for him. He was able to survive until the liberation and was brought to the hospital by American soldiers. After the liberation, he moved to Canada and then in the United States.

Quotes from Joseph Mortkwitz: “It was difficult to describe the life that we've gone through. It was a torture. It was a very very rough torture.”
"In the ghettos, starvation was tremendous."