Piaski: Kurt Thomas Eyewitness Testimony
Kurt Thomas describes the Piaski ghetto
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Kurt Thomas was born in 1914, in Brno Czechoslovakia (now known as Czech Republic). In 1939, he was discharged from the army following German occupation and he was imprisoned in different ghettos, and concentration and extermination camps in Poland and Czech Republic.
"I found out that those who didn’t come out from their hiding places.... And I would have been in the hiding place with the other people in the other half of the ghetto. They didn’t come out. They didn’t find them. But they bombed all these homes, and the basements were...uh.... What you call it? Imploded-like, and the people died there in these basements."
Kurt Thomas describes the actions taken on 4-5th November 1942 whilst rounding up Jews from the ghettos in Piaski. Kurt Thomas (1990)
In this oral testimony, Kurt describes the atrocities carried out by Nazis that he witnessed between 1939-1945.
In March 1942, Kurt, his sister and parents were transported to Theresienstadt Ghetto (Czech Republic). One month later Kurt was transported to the ghetto in Piaski and undertook forced labour duties on a farm.
Kurt was then transported to Trawniki concentration camp (Poland) in November 1942 and then to Sobibór camp (Poland). During the (October) 1943 uprising in Sobibór, Kurt managed escaped and returned to Piaski, where he hid on the farm where he previously worked until liberation.
The following testimony by Kurt Thomas was sourced from the United States Holocaust Memorial (USHMM) archives.