Aaron Kobel (M / Lithuania, 1932), Holocaust survivor

Aaron Kobel (M / Lithuania, 1932), Holocaust survivor

• One of the Kovno Boys (?)
• <Kovno Ghetto> <Dachau> <Auschwitz> <Death March> -- <Israel> <United States>

Biography

Aaron Kobel, the son of Hershel Kobel and Rachel Stern, was born in Kovno in 1932. When the war started, they were forced into the Kovno ghetto. When the ghetto was liquidated, Aaron was separated from her mother at Stutthof and sent with his father at Dachau and Auschwitz. He survived the death march, Liberated, he recovered in a camp in Munich. He was reunited with his mother, who remarried with Jacob Gordon, the father of Murray Gordon. Aaron moved to Israel and from there to the United Staes in 1952.

USHMM Oral Interview

The interview describes Mr. Kobel's childhood in Tilsit, Germany (now Sovetsk, Russia), the family's move to Kovno, Lithuania in 1938, and their forced move by Russian troops into the Slavodka (a suburb of Kovno) ghetto in 1940. Mr. Kobel describes the round-up and deportation of Jews by Nazi troops in 1941, his separation from his mother, and his and his father's deportation to Dachau, and then to Auschwitz. He describes the terrible conditions of forced labor and the beatings he received, the death march he endured, his condition upon liberation - at the age of 13 and weighing 60 pounds, and being nursed in a camp in Munich by American soldiers. Mr. Kobel describes his reunion with his mother, obtaining false papers and traveling to Israel by ship, and being detained by British troops and interned in Cyprus. He discusses his release from Cyprus and arrival in Israel, serving in the Israeli military until he was 18, and emigrating to the United States in 1952.