M. was the oldest child of four. He quarried stone to support the family after his father, a butcher, went bankrupt. From April 10, 1944, until January 1945, M. was occupied in the Auschwitz 'Sonderkommando' to handle bodies of fellow Jews who were gassed and burned. M. witnessed the deaths of 400,000 Jews brought in transports from Hungary during the summer of 1944. As the capacity of the crematories was too small to burn all the corpses (more than 10 000 Jews gassed per day), M. and others had to dig two huge pits and burn the bodies in them. To improve the process they had to pour back over the top of the pile the body fat which was collected in holes in the pit. 

When prisoners arrived at the camp, the SS (Nazi) officers told them they must take showers. They would leave their luggage at the platform and then they would undress in the changing room. There were hangers and benches. They would undress, take their towels and soap with them. And from there through a corridor whole families or couples would go to a sham washroom with provisional showers: everything looked like a bath. When it was starting to get crowded in the gas chambers the prisoners realised that something was wrong. The SS would beat people with sticks and pushed them into the chambers, until the SS men would close the door (which was hermetic, like in a cool-house). And it was only then that the screaming and crying would start. An ambulance with a red cross would arrive and the SS would send the Zyklon B gas through the roof. When they opened the gas chamber, M. saw the gassed people, entangled with each other, holding hands, because they brought whole families. Sometimes it would happen that somebody was squashed by others on the floor and survived because the gas would not reach the very bottom. Sometimes everybody was gassed but some child fell down and survived. Then an SS man would kill it with a small-calibre gun.

After the liberation of Auschwitz, M. reported to the Sovjets as an eyewitness. He continued to live in Poland and performed different jobs. Among other things, for 16 years he worked as a manager of a branch of a state-owned enterprise. Later he had a fox farm. In 1972 he went on a disability pension, but he worked for 15 more years as a cargo taxi driver. He loved to travel. Among other countries he has been to Columbia and Canada. In addition he often visited his sister in the US. In his house in Gliwice he had an impressive collection of porcelain figures and game cards. M. has one son and one grandson. 

M. spent decades teaching the Holocaust, guiding Auschwitz tours and telling his story. M. found himself in the spotlight in May 2006 when Pope Benedict XVI visited Auschwitz and kissed Mandelbaum on both cheeks. M. said especially young people should learn what happened in Auschwitz-Birkenau: "Man muss das doch alles wissen, man muss doch wissen, wie lange sind die Leute gewesen in die Gaskammer. Man muss wissen, wie lange sie haben gebrennt in die Ofen" ("One has to know it all, has to know, how long the people have been in the gas chamber. One has to know how long they have burned in the ovens"). 

M. died on 17 June 2008 at 85 in a hospital in Bytom, Poland, several days after heart surgery, said Igor Bartosik, a historian at the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum who has co-written a coming book on M., who is survived by his wife, a sister, one son and grandchildren. M. gave testimony in interviews and films, for instance:
 
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=3398

Anus Mundi, Poland, 2007, 25 min.

Anschrift von / Address of M.:  

Werke von / Works of M.: 

Literatur über / Writings concerning M.: 

Literatur im Katalog der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek von und über / Writings in the catalogue of Deutsche Nationalbibliothek of and about : Henryk Mandelbaum    

Letzte Änderung / Last update: 16.06.2008 

 Zum Register / Back to Registry