Bernard Offen (born 17 April 1929) in Kraków, Poland is a

Holocaust survivor Holocaust survivors are people who survived the Holocaust, defined as the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies before and during World War II in Europe and North Africa. There is no universally accep ...

. He survived the

Kraków Ghetto The Kraków Ghetto was one of five major metropolitan Nazi ghettos created by Germany in the new General Government territory during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It was established for the purpose of exploitation, terror, and ...

and several

Nazi concentration camps From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps, (officially) or (more commonly). The Nazi concentration camps are distinguished from other types of Nazi camps such as forced-labor camps, as well as concen ...

. His parents, two brothers, and one sister lived in the

Podgórze Podgórze is a district of Kraków, Poland, situated on the right (southern) bank of the Vistula River, at the foot of Lasota Hill. The district was subdivided in 1990 into six new districts, see present-day districts of Kraków for more details. ...

area of

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...

which in March 1941 became the Kraków Ghetto. His mother, Rochme Gittel Schiffer, and his sister Miriam were deported, probably to

Belzec extermination camp Belzec (English: or , Polish: ) was a Nazi German extermination camp built by the SS for the purpose of implementing the secretive Operation Reinhard, the plan to murder all Polish Jews, a major part of the "Final Solution" which in total ...

, where they were murdered. Bernard survived the Nazi concentration camps of

Płaszów Płaszów is a suburb of Kraków, Poland, now part of Podgórze district. Formerly a separate village, it became a part of the Greater Kraków in 1911 under the Austrian Partition of Poland as the 21st cadastral district of the city. During World ...

, Julag,

Mauthausen Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern German ...

Auschwitz-Birkenau Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

, and

Dachau , , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction ...

. During this time he was separated first from his two brothers, Sam and Natan, and later also from his father who was murdered in Auschwitz-Birkenau. After the war, Bernard reunited with his two brothers. In 1951 the Offen brothers decided to emigrate to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. In 1981 Bernard returned to Poland for the first time since the war to confront the demons of his past. From 1991 on Bernard began to spend his summers in Kraków dealing with the past through what he calls the "process of healing". He started taking people on tours of the former ghetto, Płaszów and Auschwitz-Birkenau. His experiences Bernard documented in four movies. In 1992 Bernard gave close to an 8 hours recorded testimony by the Oral History Project of the United States Holocaust memorial Museum. Austrian Holocaust Memorial Servants (Gedenkdieners) serving their

Memorial Service A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect th ...

in Kraków cooperate frequently with Bernard Offen and take part in his walks to the ghetto area and Płaszów camp.

Tax resistance

In 1986, in a letter to the

Internal Revenue Service The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory ta ...

, Offen told the agency that he would be refusing to pay 25% of his taxes and would forward that money instead to an alternative fund because his experiences in the Nazi extermination camps had made him unwilling to be an accomplice in the nuclear arms race that "could end life for 5,000,000,000 people, five billion Jews. For now the whole world is Jewish and nuclear devices are the gas ovens for the planet.... I will not willingly contribute to the production of nuclear devices. They are more lethal than the gas Zyklon B, the gas that killed my father and countless others."

Filmography

* ''The Work'' (1983) *''My Hometown Concentration Camp'' (1997) A book carrying the same name was published in 2008 * ''Process B-7815'' (1999) * ''Hawaii and the Holocaust'' (2004)

References

External links

*
A personal interview with Bernard OffenClips from Bernard's Documentaries
at YouTube * * 1929 births Living people Polish emigrants to the United States Mauthausen concentration camp survivors Auschwitz concentration camp survivors Dachau concentration camp survivors Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp survivors Kraków Ghetto inmates American tax resisters {{Poland-bio-stub