Holzplatz Penal Colony at Auschwitz

[00:00-00:06]

Video begins with inter-title in white text on black screen while instrumental music plays and fades into the next frame: Moishe Kantorowitz was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 1943 and selected for forced labour.

[00:07-03:15]

Cut to Holocaust survivor Moishe Kantorowitz, sitting in front of a dark background, and looking to the left of the camera. The camera shows his face and shoulders as he speaks during an interview conducted in Toronto in 1990.

>> Moishe Kantorowitz: The only thing I want to mention there is that…

[00:12-00:17]

The name “Moishe Kantorowitz” and the location of the filmed interview, “Toronto”, appear in white text above his right shoulder.

>> …above every thought, was the hunger that wouldn't let me think of anything else. It haunted me day and night. And in the morning, when we used to come out in the Appel (roll call), and my block, Block 18, was facing the kitchen. I used to see a pile of garbage, and I walked over once and saw some rotten potatoes. And I began to stuff every morning the potatoes in my pocket and they were so rotten that they used to ooze through the pants down into my legs.  And I used to string them up on a wire at work and bake them at work, so I burned them so I could eat something. I was caught and thrown out into a penal colony. And if there are still survivors who worked in Auschwitz, the penal colony was called the Holzplatz, whose foreman was a man by the name of Pilarek. I'm mentioning it because if there are still survivors now, and worked in there, who know about Holzplatz and know about Pilarek, who had to supply as much as 10% mortality a day. His famous method of killing the inmates, he used to hit them over their legs until they fell. Once you fell, he rolled you over on the back, put the stick across your throat, and stood on the stick with his feet until you suffocated. My chances of survival were very slim. Because of the good advice, and I may say the good advice of another inmate, I survived six weeks. In Auschwitz, in my room, I slept on bunks that were three storeys high. Below me on the bottom bunk slept a Jew from France, number 42,000 by the name of Fisch. I was in the middle. Above me was a Pole, not a Jew but a Pole, a political member. His number was 805, by the name of Leon Kolofsky. He was a foreman in a carpenter shop. For there they consisted of two departments, the repair shop and the carpenter shop. One Sunday evening he says to me, “What's that mean to you? You are disappearing completely. You have shrunk to nothing.” So I said to him, “What do you expect? I am working at the Holzplatz.” He says “Holzplatz?! How long?” I say, “For six weeks.” He says “Six weeks!? You have survived six weeks?” I said, “Yeah.” So without further ado, he turns to his superior, a kapo by the name of Janek Gradek, and he says “Janek, take him into your Halle.” That was a barrack, a part of the building where the carpenters worked there. So that kapo says to me, “I cannot take him in unless he's got permission from his kapo.” So I say, “My kapo could not care less he said if I am a Muselmann.” A Muselmann is the expression of those that are ready to go to the ovens. “Oh,” he says, “if that's the case, tomorrow morning, Monday morning, you come to me.” Sure enough, the following morning, instead of going to my old group, I went to the carpenter shop.

[03:16-03:24

Music plays for the remainder of the video. Three credit pages appear in white text on black screen: Interview conducted by David Magder, Archives of the Holocaust Project, Toronto, 1990, Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre

Directing: Helgi Piccinin; Editing and Colorization: Michaël Gravel, Helgi Piccinin; Audio Mix and Original Music: Pierre-Luc Lecours. [Logo for Chaire de recherche du Canada en patrimoine ethnologique]

Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre, copyright 2017.

--

End of transcript.