Oral History Interview with Kurt Kupferberg

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Title

Oral History Interview with Kurt Kupferberg

Date

July 24, 1981

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Interviewee:
Kurt Kupferberg
Interviewer:
Josey G. Fisher

Summary

Kurt Kupferberg was born September 1907 in Berlin, Germany to an observant, middle-class family from Galicia. After World War I, their citizenship was changed to Polish, resulting in their being part of the mass deportation to Zbąszyń, Poland, in 1938. A Nazi policeman had warned them to leave. Kurt describes his return to Germany in 1939, as well as his deportation and experiences in Sachsenhausen in 1939, Dachau in 1940, and Buchenwald in 1941. He details the selections of Dr. Mengele and medical experiments performed on him in Buchenwald, describing his suffering from typhus following an injection of the microorganism under his skin.

As Allied Forces approached Buchenwald, non-Jewish political prisoners sheltered Jews from the S.S. He was liberated by General Patton’s unit July 11, 1945. He married a survivor in Berlin in 1946 and emigrated with his wife and baby to the United States in 1947.

Also see testimony of his wife, Hardy W. Kupferberg.

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Publisher:
Gratz College
Length:
01:04:24, 01:04:25, 01:04:22, 01:04:16, 00:18:48
Number of Tapes:
5
Language:
English
Identifier:
HOHAGC00278
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