The Bleeding Sky-Recollections of the Shoah
My mother, Malka Brandsdorfer, lived in a small Polish town near the German border. At the start of World War II she was married and had a young daughter. During the war her married name was Goldratt. She recorded her recollections of the Holocaust. The conditions in the town. Her family's struggle and the ghetto and camps she lived through. She tells of how many of her family died and how only she and one sister survived. Her recollections are told in Yiddish. There is a written version of my mother's story in English that can be downloaded at the website.
- Update frequency
- every day
- Average duration
- 10 minutes
- Episodes
- 22
- Years Active
- 2008
Chapter 1
My mother begins her recollection of the Shoah with a conversation she had with a friend and fellow survivor.
00:10:04 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
22_Wesbaden
Leaving Poland for good, my mother travels looking for surviving family and friends. She finds very few, learns of the fate of many of them. Settling in a displaced persons camp in Wesbaden Germany, …
00:08:11 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
21_Returning
Returning home after the war. My mother travels on foot and by train through war torn Germany and Poland. She finds other survivors, among them her younger sister Fay. Her homecoming is bitter sweet …
00:11:22 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
20_Liberation
The labor camp at Neustadt is unexpectedly liberated when the German guards abandon the labor camp. The Germans move west to excape the advancing Russian army.
00:06:17 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
19_Neustadt
My mother spent the last few months of the war in the labor camp at Neustadt, which is near Hamburg.
00:09:04 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
18_Death March
With the Russian army nearing Auschwitz in January 1945, the Germans evacuate the camp and force march the prisoners to the concentration camp at Gross Rosen. Known as the Death March, it lasted many…
00:04:42 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
17_Auschwitz
Toward the end of 1944 my mother's kommando is moved from Birkenau to the main camp in Auschwitz.
00:10:48 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
16_Blue Affect
My mother bribes her way into the Blue Affect. It was the building where the clothes of Auschwitz's victims was sorted for use by the Germans.
00:08:14 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
15_The Bleeding Sky
With the fires in Birkenue burning all the time, to dispose of the bodies of the murdered Jews, the ash turns the evening sky blood red. My mother describes this vision of hell that was Auschwitz.
00:11:46 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
14_ Yenta and Sara
Yenta and Sara, my mother's 2 youngest sisters come to Birkenau. The three of them are reunited, but only for a short while as disease and the gas chamber take both of them.
00:09:38 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
13_Mala Zimetbaum
My mother is rescued from the gas chamber by Mala Zimetbaum. Later Mala Zimetbaum escapes from Auschwitz with a male accomplice. After a few days they are caught and executed in front of the whole ca…
00:03:35 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
12_Birkenau
Needing labor, the Germans transfer my mother and a number of other inmates of Majdanek to the Birkenau section of Auschwitz. My mother works in a number of jobs in and around the camp.
00:17:36 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
11-Majdanek
Packed into a crowded freight car my mother is sent from Warsaw to the Majdanek. Majdanek was the major concentration camp on the eastern side of Poland.
00:15:37 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
10_Uprising
In April 1943, the Germans conduct a final aktion to clear the Warsaw ghetto. The Jewish partisans of the ghetto create the Passover uprising and my mother goes into hiding with the other Jews in her…
00:08:57 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
9 - Aktion
An aktion was what the inhabitants of the ghetto called the German military operations to capture and remove the Jews from the ghetto. My mother describes the aktion that catches the last of the chil…
00:05:19 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
8 - Werterfassung
After most of the Jewish population of the ghetto was removed, my mother was assigned to a work detail that would go into the emptied sections of the ghetto and search through the apartments for any …
00:07:54 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
7 - Warsaw
My mother and her daughter are captured in the Warsaw train station, trying to get to the east to find her brother. They are put in prison with other Jews caught outside the ghetto.
00:12:21 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
6 - Running
Having no place left to hide near her home town, my mother and her daughter travel around Poland looking for a safe place from the Germans.
00:14:16 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
5 - Hiding
The last Jews of the town and region are rounded up for deportation. My mother, fearing for the life of her daughter, goes into hiding. One of her sisters joins her as they move from place to place s…
00:17:52 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
4 - Assemblies
With the Jews in larger cities being put into ghettos, the Jews in smaller towns are assembled to labor for the Germans and for deportation. The first deportations were to labor camps and to the larg…
00:10:39 |
Wed 04 Jun 2008
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