Oral History Interview with Victor Cooper
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Date
Contributor
Summary
Victor Cooper2 was born December 26, 1914 in Strzemieszyce, Poland, the youngest of four brothers. He was married and had a six-month old son when he was drafted into the Polish Army in 1939. His wife, son and all of his family perished during the war years.
Victor describes how he was captured by Germans in 1940and was segregated from non-Jewish POWs at Majdanek death camp in Lublin. He escaped with the help of a fellow Jewish prisoner, and fled back home where he was in Strzemieszyce Ghetto for a short time,subjected to forced labor and witnessed the liquidation of the ghetto and German atrocities. He was then deported to 10 labor and concentration camps, including Będzin, Markstadt, Gross Rosen, Flossenbürgand Buchenwald. He vividly describes his experiences, conditions, backbreaking cement work and digging tunnels and how he fought to stay alive. He details a month-long death march from Buchenwald to Dachau in April 1945, during which he escaped and was recaptured several times.
In May, 1945, he was found hiding in Bavarian woods by a Jewish doctor serving with the American 7th Army. He was taken, disoriented and ill, to a Catholic hospital in Straubing. After his recovery, he worked with an American lawyer, helping to regain possession of Jewish property in the area. In June 1949, he emigrated to the United States under the displaced persons quota. He held many jobs with the United Service for Young and New Americans and several trade unions. He remarried and fathered two children. His daughter became a lawyer and his son is a professor at Columbia University.
Former last name was Kupfer.
This was recorded at the 1985 American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Philadelphia, Pa.
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SUBJECT HEADINGS
Prisoners of war, American - Germany
World War, 1939-1945 - Participation, Jewish
Stalag (Limberg, Germany: prisoner of war camp)
Stalag (Brandenberg, Germany: prisoner of war camp)
World War, 1939-1945 - prisoner of war camp
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