Holocaust Testimonial

Chantelle Lamb

            I watched a testimonial over Henry Mikols. His story is a little bit different because he wasn’t Jewish, his family was Catholic. He and his family lived in Poland. He lived with his mother, father, and his brother. He said life before the German came to Poland was great. He was 13 when the German invaded Poland.

            Mr. Mikols was captured by the Nazi SS officers. He was going to the market to get a loaf of bread because he and his family were starving. His mother told him that it was going to be dangerous to go out on the streets because of the Nazi’s, but he did it anyways. The German officers picked up all the teenagers that were large enough to work. That was the last time that he saw his family. He was taken to Germany and became a slave on a farm. The farmer actually treated him fairly well; he had at least two meals a day. He had to do some pretty stinky jobs, but he had no choice. After about a month, him and the other 3 boys escaped because they missed their families and were going to be on a journey back to Poland. The boys of course got caught and taken to another farm. At this farm he was treated very well by the farmer. The farmer and Henry used to listen to the radio to catch up on what was  going on in the German government. One day he came inside from a long day at work and a German soldier was waiting in the living room for him. He was arrested because the government thought he was spreading news that wasn’t true.

            While he was in prison the conditions were very bad. There were about 15 people in one cell, they had to sleep on the floor side to side. The prisoners got a bowl of soup once every three days and were still expected to exercise with the little amount of energy that they had. From prison he went to a concentration camp. In the concentration camp he was used as an experiment for a new medication that the German had invented. He was one of the few that survived the study. Mr. Mikols thought he was in prison for life and would never see outside of the concentration camp. The day that he was actually left free he really didn’t have anywhere to go. He did express that he wanted the younger generation to know what really went on during the holocaust, and it was actually a very awful thing that he had to go through.