Memories in Focus by Pinchas Gutter - Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Collection

In 2002, Pinchas is asked to go back Poland to make a documentary, and ends up connecting with another survivor, Jakub Gutenbaum.

Pinchas shares his final thoughts on his experiences and the idea of optimism for the future.

Pinchas and his family stays in South Africa from 1959 to 1985, eventually moving to Toronto, Canada, to join Dorothy’s brother.

After arriving in Israel and completing army training, Pinchas meets his future wife in Jerusalem, a South African Jew.

They arrive in Theresienstadt, Czechoslovakia, where Pinchas works for the Soviet and Czech administration of the camp. He uses horses and a wagon to deliver food to the German prisoners-of-war and SS soldiers who were being held for trial as war criminals.

Eventually, Pinchas is shipped out to a town called Częstochowa where he lands in an iron smelting factory before he is again moved to Buchenwald until the middle of April 1945. He is then made to death march.

The author arrives in Skarżysko and is sent to the worst campsite where he and the other prisoners are met with cruelty and disgusting living conditions. He also describes the social infrastructure of the camp.

Pinchas and his family are captured and taken to Majdanek. He is separated from his mother and sister, and very soon his father as well. Pinchas describes his few brutal months at the camp.

In 1941 conditions worsened and soon people are being deported to Treblinkato to be sent to gas chambers. Pinchas and his family feel the constrictions and survive by hiding until April 19, 1943, the eve of the uprising of the Warsaw ghetto.