Abba Naor / Abba Nauchovitz (M / Lithuania, 1928), Holocaust survivor

Abba Naor / Abba Nauchovitz (M / Lithuania, 1928), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Kovno Ghetto> <Stutthof> <Dachau> <Death March>

Biography

Abba Naor was born in 1928 in the city of Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania. In August 1941, two months after the German invasion of the city, a ghetto was established in Kovno in which the city's Jews were imprisoned, including Abba's family. His eldest brother, Haim, was caught while searching for food, and murdered at the Seventh Fort. In July 1941, the remaining family members were deported to the Stutthof concentration camp, where they were separated. Abba and his father were sent to a Dachau sub-camp to perform forced labor, and some time later they too separated. Abba's brother Beraleh, and mother Hannah, were sent to Auschwitz. In the Dachau sub-camp Abba was forced to work at construction, digging, and driving a diesel train. he was later trasferred to the Kaufering camp. In April the inmates were forced on a death march, during which they were rescued by American soldiers. Abba reached a Displaced Person's camp near Munich, where he met his father, and the two moved to Poland. In Lodz, Abba joined a Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot nucleus, and in 1946 he boarded an illegal immigration ship to pre-state Israel. In 1950 he married Leah, and the two have two children. Over the years, Abba has worked for Israel's General Security Forces, the Weizmann Institute and the Mossad. Abba has spoken at German schools about his Holocaust experiences and has taken part in memorial ceremonies for victims of the Holocaust.

USHMM Oral Interview

Abba Naor (né Nauchovitz), born in 1928, discusses his childhood in Kaunas, Lithuania; his deportation with his family to Germany during the war years; the subsequent deportations of his father to Munich, his mother and brother to Auschwitz, and his own deportation to Stutthof; the death march he endured in April 1945; the starvation he experienced; his liberation by members of the French resistance; witnessing American soldiers taking German soldiers as prisoners; his experiences in a displaced persons camp in Munich, Germany; his reunion with his father; learning from an uncle that their family members had perished; their travels through Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Austria, until they reached Salzburg, Austria, where they stayed on a kibbutz run by a Jewish agency; joining the Haganah; boarding a fishing boat in Marseilles, France in October 1946 bound for Palestine; being refused entry by British authorities and being sent to Cyprus; the military training he received; his eventual immigration to Palestine; his marriage and family; and his life in San Francisco, CA.