Shortly after the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, “Izzy” Arbeiter, his family and other Polish Jews were rounded up. The young Arbeiter would spend most of the war in several concentration camps, including Auschwitz, as a slave laborer for the German war effort; his parents and younger brother were sent to a concentration camp and exterminated. He was part of a “death march” through the Black Forest in southern Germany in April 1945 when he was liberated by Allied forces. Arbeiter would immigrate to the U.S. after the war with his wife (also a Holocaust survivor) and baby daughter; he helped establish the American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Greater Boston Inc.

This interview was recorded at the International Museum of World War II-Boston.

 

 

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