The Surviving Story of Isak Borenstein
'I was in a Kommando. They call this in German Bomb Kommando. This means, in English means dig out un-exploded bombs. So I dig out together around 60 some odd bombs.'
"I passed the little bridge, I believe this is the Elbe River. On the other side was a Russian soldier. He talked to me Russian. You know, if I explained to you in Russian you would know. The word is 'Kuda idyosh?' ('Where are you going?'). So I told him, 'I am going home.' He said, 'No, you are not going home, you are going into the army.'
Audio
http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/data.show.php?di=record&da=recordings&ke=2
A Taste of Freedom
Conclusion
- He was taken on a train with cattle carts to Linz III.
- He stayed three days in the camp and was almost shot.
- He ran away from the group before the shooting and escaped back to Poland.
By: Nathan Don, Thomas Oliver, Jonathan Akl, Walton Lake
- He was forced into the Russian army for fourteen months.
- Afterward, he went back to his home in Radom, Poland.
- Isak and his brother, Abe, survived the Holocaust and reunited at Radom.
- He moved to Germany and met his wife there.
- Finally, he eventually moved to the United States.
Germany Invades Poland
The Escape
Life in Camp
- When Germans invaded Poland, Isak fled to Krasnodar, Russia.
- Once in Russia, he joined the army and sent to Kremenchug.
- He was captured by German soldiers and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.
- Isak escapes the prisoner-of-war camp and flees to a town called 'five houses'.
- There, he has a friend named Romanoff who got drunk and was questioned.
- Isak was then turned in and taken to a prison in Dnepropetrovsk.
- He was forced to work long hours and was given little food.
- He was in a bomb kamando which meant that he dug out unexploded bombs that the English and Americans through down.
- In his last days at camp, he moved 200 pound sacks of wheat and oats onto a barge.
Symbolism
Isak Borenstein is like an ox because of his strength and courage during the Holocaust.
Life in Prison
- Isak was taken to a dark room that was a basement.
- He met a girl named Ira Pogorelskaja.
- She nursed Isak to health.
- Eventually, the Nazis took her out of the prison and she was never seen again.
- Isak was then tortured in a death chamber.
- He was given cold showers and beaten with leather straps.
- Finally, he was transferred to another camp near Dnepropetrovsk.
Born: Radom, Poland
- Isak Borenstein had 3 brothers and 3 sisters.
- He was born on May 5, 1918.
- He worked on a farm until the Holocaust started.