Oral History Interview with Manya Perel

Manya Perel (née Frydman), born in 1924 in Radom, Poland, describes being the youngest of 10 children in a traditional Jewish family; her father’s bakery; her education and Jewish life in Radom; antisemitism and the Przytyk pogrom in 1936; German invasion in 1939; the persecutions and the deportation of younger males to Belzec labor camp in 1941; the establishment of a ghetto in Radom; the collaboration of Volksdeutsche and Ukrainians in brutalities and some help by Jewish police; the “resettlement” of Radom Jews to Treblinka in August 1942 while younger, able-bodied persons were retained for forced labor in factories near Radom; her efforts to hide her five-year-old niece in the barracks of a Majdanek subcamp; being transferred to Majdanek, then Płaszów, and then Auschwitz; conditions in the camps; the harsher conditions in Gundelsdorf in Oberfranken, Germany, where slave laborers were taken as the Russian Army approached; experiencing near starvation in early 1945 during their evacuation to camps Ravensbrück and Rechlin; nearly dying of typhus after liberation; returning to Radom to search for family and finding continued antisemitism there; going to Stuttgart with the help of UNRRA and the Joint Distribution Committee; immigrating to Montreal, Canada in 1948; and moving to Philadelphia, PA in 1958.

Date: 10/26/1982
Interviewer: Nora Levin
Interviewee: Manya Perel
Language: English
Subject: Forced labor.
Hidden children (Holocaust)--Poland.
Holocaust survivors--United States.
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Poland--Personal narratives.
Jewish ghettos--Poland--Radom (Województwo Mazowieckie)
Jewish women in the Holocaust.
Jews--Poland--Radom (Województwo Mazowieckie)
Pogroms--Poland--Przytyk.
Starvation.
Typhus fever.
Women concentration camp inmates.
World War, 1939-1945--Atrocities--Poland.
World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps--Liberation.
World War, 1939-1945--Conscript labor.
World War, 1939-1945--Deportations from Poland.
Women--Personal narratives.
Canada--Emigration and immigration.
Montréal (Québec)
Oberfranken (Germany)
Philadelphia (Pa.)
Poland--History--Occupation, 1939-1945.
Przytyk (Poland)
Radom (Województwo Mazowieckie, Poland)
United States--Emigration and immigration.
World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Poland.
Perel, Manya, 1924-
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
Auschwitz (Concentration camp)
Gundelsdorf (Concentration camp)
Majdanek (Concentration camp)
Plaszów (Concentration camp)
Ravensbrück (Concentration camp)
Rechlin (Concentration camp)
United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
Location: Radom, Poland
Radom Ghetto
Majdanek concentration camp
Plaszow concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp
Gundelsdorf concentration camp
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Retzow concentration camp
Stuttgart, Germany
Canada
USA
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