Joseph Greenbaum

Of Blessed Memory 1921 – 2011

Joseph Greenbaum was born in 1921 in Piotrków, Poland, the oldest in a family of eight children. When the Germans invaded Poland, Joseph initially fled the city with a non-Jewish friend, heading for Radom. After the bombing stopped he returned home and was eventually confined to the Piotrków ghetto where he was regularly pulled out to perform hard labor. Joseph performed forced labor in a series of large and small labor camps including Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Ohrdruf, Dachau, Oranienburg, and Sachsenhausen. He was liberated on the road near Pasing, Germany while on a death march between camps. After the war he discovered that one brother had survived while the rest of the family was murdered at Treblinka. Joseph immigrated to the United States in 1949.