Mr. G, Age 82
Place of Persecution: Rabka bei Zakopane
Date: 1942
“[In] 1940-1941 we were living in Krakow, Poland. The Nazis started to build the ghetto. My father finds a house in the province, in between Krakow and Zakopane. The village is called Rabka. This happened because we did not want to go to the ghetto. The SS and the Gestapo robbed all of our possessions from the villa we lived in. And they took us along. I, 20 years [old] at that time, resist, and as a result I was subjected to medical experiments.
What I am about to write you have not heard or read before, as follows: Me and a Jewish American (a watchmaker, passport from the USA) were subjected to medical experiments. SS German Shepherd dogs, belonging to the commander of the SS Obersturmfuehrer Rosenbaum, with a special poison on their teeth … we had to run [and] the dogs had to chase us. Afterwards they examined our wounds, the blood. A doctor … ripped the flesh of my legs and examined it. After some time I was able to escape. First to a peasant in a village—afterwards to friends of mine in Krakow. There my wounded legs started healing. As a result of this experiment (the dog bite and the poison) my whole left foot was ripped apart and during the course of the years I developed wounds and cancer. During August 1962 and November 1962 I was operated [on] in the cancer institute and was treated in Gliwice in Poland. … My good parents were shot in the summer of 1942 under the supervision of SS Obersturmfuehrer Rosenbaum and were buried in the mass grave in Rabka.”