born 20. July 1931, Będzin
lived in Będzin / France / Lima (Peru)
prisoner of the concentration camps, witness of the history,
Peruvian entrepreneur
On 24. June 1943 he was deported from the Będzin ghetto in Kamionka to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, where he was a messenger for dr Josef Mengele. He was a subject of experiments on hepatitis B. After 3 months, he was transferred to Sachsenhausen and from there, on 20. April 1945 evacuated during so-called death march. He was liberated by the British Army in Lubeck 4 May.
Until 1950 he was in a Jewish orphanage in Miossac near Toulouse (France). There he finished school and learned carpentry. In 1952 he immigrated to his aunt to Peru. There, he worked as a carpenter in a furniture factory and sold household electrical appliances. Hirsh Litmanowicz Gonjuch married a Peruvian, with whom he has four children (three of which live in Israel).
His wartime experiences have been repeatedly reported in the press and on the Internet; in 1998 he gave a 2.5-hour interview for the USC Shoah Foundation Institute. He is the hero of a 16-minute film “Una voz de Auschwitz. Hirsh Litmanowicz”. He is the only survivor of Auschwitz living in Peru.