Henryk Tauber

Henryk (Tauber) Fuchsbrunner (8 July 1917[1] – 3 January 2000[2]) was a Polish Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp during the Holocaust, who gave detailed testimony at the end of World War II. Tauber was his mother's maiden name. His parents were married by a rabbi and never filed for a civil licence due to quotas on the number of Jewish marriages in Galicia then under Austrian rule. Henryks father's name was Abraham Fuchsbrunner and Fuchsbrunner was the name by which he was known. Henryk Fuchsbrunner shortened his name to Henry Fuchs after he arrived in the United States in 1952.

Fuchsbrunner was one of five children. He lived with his extended family in Chrzanów in south Poland before the outbreak of war.

After several deportations, Tauber arrived at the Kraków Ghetto. After avoiding capture by the Germans for over 3 years, he was arrested in November 1942 and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp.[3] Shortly after arriving at Auschwitz, he was selected for work in the Sonderkommando at the crematoria of the camp, where his specialized job of stoking the ovens with corpses probably ensured his survival.[4]

  1. ^ Graif, Gideon (2005) We Wept Without Tears: Testimonies of the Jewish Sonderkommando from Auschwitz, Yale University Press ISBN 978-0-300-10651-0 (p. 74)
  2. ^ "Ancestry Library Edition".
  3. ^ Długoborski, Wacław; Piper, Franciszek (2000). Auschwitz, 1940–1945: Mass murder. Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. p. 244. ISBN 9788385047872.
  4. ^ Pressac, Jean-Claude, (1989) AUSCHWITZ: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, Beate Klarsfeld Foundation (p.482)