ב"ה
The Holocaust
Chabad at Oxford

Ben Helfgott's Story
Ben Helfgott, born in Lodz, Poland, 1929, is a Holocaust survivor and former champion weightlifter representing Great Britain in the Olympics. This is his personal story of survival and triumph. (Many viewers may find details described to be extremely disturbing. Viewer discretion advised.)

Auschwitz Survivor Victor Greenberg
Victor Greenberg tells the story of how he grew up in the small village of Majdan, now in Slovakia. In 1941, when he was 12 years old, he and his family were among the very few to escape when the entire Jewish population of the town was massacred. He was a prisoner in Auschwitz, Mauthausen and Gunskirchen, where he was finally liberated by the Americans. (Many viewers may find details described to be extremely disturbing. Viewer discretion advised.)

Auschwitz Holocaust survivor Freddie Knoller
Auschwitz survivor Freddie Knoller shares his amazing story of survival, including how the Gestapo in Paris thought he was a German and hired him as a translator. (Many viewers may find details described to be extremely disturbing. Viewer discretion advised.)

A Survivor’s Personal Story
In 1940, when Mark Goldfinger was 9, the SS set up an academy for training killers near his hometown of Rabka, Poland. This is the amazing account of what he saw and how he survived. (Many viewers may find details described to be extremely disturbing. Viewer discretion advised.)

The Controversial Story of Kasztner’s Train
As a child, Professor Ladislaus Löb watched as anti-Semitism slowly tightened its grip on the Hungarian nation, culminating in the Natzi occupation, beginning in 1944. He later wrote a book describing how Rezső Kasztner negotiated with Eichmann, saving Löb and 1,700 other Jews. Kasztner was later accused of collaborating with the Natzis.

The Inaugural Sami Rohr Memorial Lecture
The Rohr and Feuchtwanger families both emerged from the neo-orthodox movement of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch. Sami Rohr was both a prominent supporter of Chabad and a patron of Jewish literary endeavors. One of his favorite writers was the Jewish German novelist, Lion Feuchtwanger, who was a vocal critic of the Nazis. Lion's nephew, Edgar Feuchtwanger, grew up as a neighbor of Hitler.

The rise of anti-semitism in Latvia, and the personal story of George Schwab
George Schwab was ten years old when he witnessed the willing collaboration of his Latvian neighbors in the persecution and murder of Jews. Here he presents an overview of the development of antisemitism in Latvia and reads a chapter from his forthcoming memoir.

From Cuba and the United States a shipload of Jews forced back to Germany
In May 1939 the cruise ship S.S. St Louis sailed from Hamburg for Cuba with some 980 Jewish passengers fleeing from Nazi persecution. When Cuba refused them entry the ship went on to Florida, but the US government too refused them entry.

A harrowing first-hand account
Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was deported to Auschwitz in December 1943. Due to her being an accomplished cellist she was saved and was made to join the Women's Orchestra. She was forced to play marches as the slave laborers left the camp for each day's work and gave concerts for the SS. In October 1944, with the Red Army closing in, Anita was taken to Bergen-Belsen where she stayed until its liberation by the British.

Born in Hungary in 1932, Agnes survived the Debrecen ghetto and, after her transport to Auschwitz was diverted due to an administrative error, she worked as a child laborer in the agricultural and armament labor camps of Austria. She returned to Hungary and lived under the Stalinist communist regime.