Helen Balsam (F / Poland, 1927), Holocaust survivor

Helen Balsam (F / Poland, 1927), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Ghetto> <Deportees> <Auschwitz> various camps <Gunskirchen>

USHMM Oral Interview

Helen Balsam, born December 16, 1927 in Bedzin, Poland, discusses her childhood in Poland during World War II; witnessing the destruction and burning of homes and synagogues early in the war; her father’s registration for the Polish Army; early resistance against Germany; her father’s capture in Russia and internment in various labor camps; her family’s placement in a ghetto; her family’s internment in Auschwitz; the hardships she experienced during her internment in a labor camp in Hirschberg (Jelenia Gora), Poland; working in a textile factory; her reunion with her father in Hirschberg; her experiences being transported to multiple camps near the end of the war; her experiences walking through “the roads of death” in Austria; her traumatic experiences in the labor camp, Gunskirchen; her liberation from the labor camp by the American Army; her stay at the German soldiers’ camp, Hirschegg; her long-term hospitalization after the war; and marrying a Christian man from the Hirschegg camp.