joseph morton-by katie pittman

Joseph Morton was born on July 11, 1924 in Lodz Poland. He lived in an apartment with his parents and six brothers and sisters. His family was a typical Jewish family. He was sent to one of the nicer schools in the area for a better education. The first major change that became apparent to Joseph happened when the German army came into his town and blocked off some streets and didn't allow any Jewish people in those areas. Although, it was not easy to identify Jews from non-Jews. To make it easy to see who was Jewish and who was not, the Jewish people had to wear a yellow band around their arm, which later was yellow changed to them having to wear yellow stars on their arms and back so it was easy to identify the Jews from any angle.

In 1940 the ghettos were established and many started dying from hunger.  Joseph describes it how we look at starving Africans today. He was always in fear for his life and his families life. The Germans would come in and beat them, and kept them contained in  the ghettos with barbed wire. He had to work very hard for a very little ration of food. Joseph and his brothers would hide in different places constantly to try and avoid being harmed by the German officers.

Most of the Jewish men in that particular area were gathered and put into cattle cars and sent to concentration camps. The only food that Joseph had to eat was a little bit of bread that he had brought with him and the trip to the camp was several days long. Auschwitz was their destination, but didn't stay there long. After leaving Auschwitz, the men were sent to working camps where they were tortured. However, Joseph and his brothers and dad managed to stay together. Joseph ended up getting ill and had to prove to the Germans that he was still able to do work. Anyone that was ill and was useless to the Germans was killed.

After liberation, Joseph gained his weight back and got his health back in order. He decided that he could no longer live in Europe because there were too many bad memories. He registered to come to the United States but that process took a long time. So, he moved to Canada then eventually to America.