Podcasts by The Bleeding Sky-Recollections of the Shoah
My mother's story of the Shoah - told in Yiddish
Further podcasts by Louis Brandsdorfer
Podcast on the topic Judentum
All episodes
22_Wesbaden from 2008-06-04T14:49:23
Leaving Poland for good, my mother travels looking for surviving family and friends. She finds very few, and learns of the fate of many of them. Settling in a displaced persons camp in Wesbaden Ger...
Listen
21_Returning from 2008-06-04T14:49:17
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 swee...
Listen
20_Liberation from 2008-06-04T14:49:11
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.
Listen
19_Neustadt from 2008-06-04T14:49:02
The labor camp near Hamburg, where my mother spent the last few months of the war.
Listen
18_Death March from 2008-06-04T14:48:54
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 ma...
Listen
17_Auschwitz from 2008-06-04T14:48:48
Toward the end of 1944 my mother's kommando is moved from Birkenau to the main camp in Auschwitz.
Listen
16_Blue Affect from 2008-06-04T14:48:41
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.
Listen
15_The Bleeding Sky from 2008-06-04T14:48:34
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.
Listen
14_ Yenta and Sara from 2008-06-04T14:48:27
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.
Listen
13_Mala Zimetbaum from 2008-06-04T14:48:19
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 ...
Listen
12_Birkenau from 2008-06-04T14:47:44
My mother goes to work in Birkenau, part of Auschwitz, the large death camp in Poland.
Listen
11-Majdanek from 2008-06-04T14:47:35
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.
Listen
10_Uprising from 2008-06-04T14:47:29
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 h...
Listen
9 - Aktion from 2008-06-04T14:47:23
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 ch...
Listen
8 - Werterfassung from 2008-06-04T14:47:16
With most of the ghetto's Jewish population removed, my mother was assigned to a work detail (Werterfassung in German) that gathered all the valuables from the emptied apartments.
Listen
7 - Warsaw from 2008-06-04T14:47:09
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.
Listen
6 - Running from 2008-06-04T14:47:04
Having no place left to hide near her home town, my mother and her daughter travel around Poland looking for a safe place to hide from the Germans.
Listen
5 - Hiding from 2008-06-04T14:46:59
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...
Listen
4 - Assemblies from 2008-06-04T14:46:54
The Germans start to assemble Jews from the area and send them to work camps. Later assemblies send them to death camps.
Listen
3 - Occupation from 2008-06-04T14:46:47
The lives my mother's family and the other of Jews living in a small Polish town under German occupation.
Listen
2 - War Begins from 2008-06-04T14:46:40
Living in a town near the German border my mother witnessed the strength and speed of the German attack on Poland.
Listen