Holocaust Audio Tour 14: Henry Wyrobnik

Go to the photo cut out of the man showing a concentration camp tattoo on his forearm. This man is Henry Wyrobnik. Henry was born in Lodz, Poland. He, his parents, siblings and many other family members were put into the Lodz Ghetto by the Nazis until August 1944, when he and his family were sent to Auschwitz. Henry shared some reflections of his experiences. As the Allied Armies approached, he and thousands of others were taken on a Death March beginning on Jan. 15, 1945. They were given only small amounts of bread. They marched for two weeks, day and night. If someone lagged behind or walked out of line, they were shot immediately by German soldiers. They were put on open coal trains, other trains were hooked on, and they spent two weeks on the train. They had nothing to eat but snow. In Czechoslovakia, people threw food to the trains as they went through the countryside, but the Czech people were shot by the SS, a quasi-military unit that serviced as Hitler’s personal guard, if they were caught throwing food. One hundred eight people were on Henry’s train, “packed like sardines,” and at the end only 35 remained. The train finally took them to Mauthausen. There they were forced to bury bodies in mass graves. In Mauthausen, they had no clothes, no food and were sitting in crowded barracks. At the end of three or four weeks, they were sent to Gunskirchen, a sub-camp of Mauthausen. At the end, Henry says they “spent three weeks without water to drink, living in the woods with mud so deep if you stepped into it, you would sink in.” Many people from other countries were also imprisoned there. They built barracks for 500 people, which were actually a gas chamber. On May 5, 1945, Gunskirschen was liberated and Henry was freed and eventually sent to a hospital to recuperate. He had lost his whole family, including his parents, one brother and two sisters. Henry met his wife, Dora, also a survivor, in a Displaced Persons (DP) Camp at Feldafing, Germany. They came to the U.S. in 1949, and he worked for Shillitos, a department store in Cincinnati. Later, he owned his own business and came to Dayton.