Natan Gewürz

I was born on 16 April 1931 in Hrubieszow (Lublin district) as the son of Berko and his wife Frieda, née Hudis.
My family name used to be Giwerc and I remember that I was also registered under this name in the various camps and later DP camps.
In Palestine I called myself Gewürz because this name is easier to pronounce and more common.

At the beginning of 1940, the German Wehrmacht marched into Hrubieszow and soon after the invasion an order was issued that the Jewish inhabitants had to report for roll call. Those Jews who turned up for the roll call were later killed, including my father. After we learnt about this, we initially hid in our house. The Polish residents of the house gave us an ultimatum to hand ourselves in to the Gestapo within 6 hours. So we left the house and my mother and I hid inside the ghetto. Another brother who had turned himself in was taken to the ghetto by the Gestapo. This brother lives in America.

One night there was a check-up and the camp leader, an SS man called Wagner, checked himself and found us hiding in the ghetto. He ordered us to hand ourselves in at the camp leader's office the next day and when we turned ourselves in there the next day, a member of the Judenrat who was present at the hearing managed to influence the camp leader to send us to the ghetto too, even though both my mother and I were unfit for work.

Around March 1943, I was transferred to the Schachwitz concentration camp near Dresden. There we had to work in a tank factory. I worked there assembling tanks. Again, I can't remember the names of the camp leaders and foremen. There were not only Jewish inmates in this camp, but also German and Italian war criminals, Russian prisoners of war, Ukrainian and French prisoners of war and, as far as I remember, there were 500 - 600 Jews in total. We also wore prisoner's clothing here and had convict numbers, I can't remember the number.

After my liberation on 8 May 1945 in Theresienstadt, I first went to Lublin and stayed in a children's home there. I stayed in Lublin until September 1945 and then went from Lublin to Sosnowitz. In the children's home in Lublin, I joined a group that wanted to emigrate to Palestine and I went with this group first to Sosnowitz and from Sosnowitz to the various DP camps.
I left Sosnowitz in October 1945 and went to Germany, where we were in the Föhrenwald DP camp in November 1945. In January 1946 we went to the Leibheim DP camp and then in April 1946 to the DP camp in Jordanbad near Biberach.
We stayed in the Jordanbad DP camp until 24 January 1947 and from Jordanbad we went to Ulm for three days and from Ulm to France on 27 January to embark in a port near Marseille for emigration to Palestine.
I remember very clearly that I was registered in the DP camp at Jordanbad near Bibrach by a UNRRA official. There can be no doubt that I was in the Jordanbad DP camp on 1 January 1947. I am still together with the members of the group that emigrated to Palestine at that time and we have kept a diary of our experiences from liberation to immigration. In this diary, the date 24 January 1947 is noted as the date on which we left the Jordanbad DP camp.
We left France in March 1947. Our ship was caught by the British authorities and we were taken to Cyprus, where we arrived on 13 April 1947.
I stayed in Cyprus until November 1947 and entered Palestine on 9 November 1947.