George D. Schwab
George D. Schwab (M / Latvia, 1931)
NOTES : George Schwab, born in 1931 in Liepaja, Latvia, discusses his childhood; hearing the first reports of persecutions against Jews in Germany and Austria and dismissing them; the feeling in Latvia that the Soviet Union would protect them; the confiscation of his family's apartment and of his father's medical practice after the Soviet invasion; deportations to Siberia before Germany declared war on the Soviet Union; harsh treatment of the Jewish population of Liepaja after the German occupation; his father's arrest, torture, and death; moving into the Liepaja ghetto with his mother and older brother; being deported to Kaiserwald concentration camp; his and his mother's deportation to the Stutthof concentration camp in 1944; his transfer to Stolp, Germany (present day Slupsk, Poland) to work on a railroad; returning to Stutthof and then being evacuated by boat; being abandoned by the German guards while sailing on the North Sea; landing in Holstein, Germany and being discovered by the German Navy; his liberation by British troops; his hospitalization in Holstein; being transferred to a Latvian children's home and running away from the home to a displaced persons camp in Neustadt, Germany and then to Berlin, Germany; his contact with relatives in England and the United States and reuniting with his mother; spending time in the Schlachtensee displaced persons camp; and immigrating with his mother to the United States.