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1982 (Creation)
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- Fenigstein, Henry
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1 audio cassette (1 hr. 09 min.)
1 folder of textual records
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Biographical history
Dr. Fenigstein was born in Warsaw, Poland, on May 12, 1913, to Zygmund Fenigstein and Julia Kissin. Dr. Fenigstein studied in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Warsaw before being conscripted to the Officer's Medical Academy of the Polish army in September 1937. In April 1940, Dr. Fenigstein went to the Warsaw Jewish Hospital, working as an assistant physician in the department of pathology. He taught anatomy and pathology in the Warsaw ghetto underground medical school and did plenty of research on topics like hunger disease until the first big liquidation of Warsaw ghetto on July 22, 1942. During the final liquidation starting on April 19, 1943, Dr. Fenigstein was sent south to a camp near the city of Lublin and from there he started his way through a few concentration camps in occupied Poland and then in Germany. He was liberated by the 3rd American army near Munich on April 30, 1945. After the war, Dr. Fenigstein studied obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Munich, Frauenklinik. In September 1948, he moved to Toronto, Canada, where he started as a general practitioner and then worked as a family physician. After acquiring certification in psychiatry from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, Dr. Fenigstein started working as a practicing psychiatrist. He also taught at Sunnybrook Hospital as a teaching staff for many years before he resigned in 1970.
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Scope and content
File consists of a transcript and an audio cassette of an oral history interview with Dr. Henry Fenigstein conducted by Dr. Charles Roland in Toronto, Ontario on 21 January 1982.
Topics discussed in the interview cover: life in Poland in the 1930s, including the restrictions for Jews and the general atmosphere of anti-Semitism; Dr. Fenigstein’s life and educational experience before the war; experience as an army physician of the Polish army; work as an assistant physician in the department of pathology in the Warsaw Jewish hospital in 1940; relocation of the hospital to the Warsaw ghetto; experience of teaching in the underground medical school and conducting research projects; conditions of the underground medical school and the hospital; the first big liquidation/extermination of the Warsaw ghetto on July 22, 1942; conditions of the hospitals after the first liquidation; the second liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto in January 1943; the final liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto on April 19th, 1943; experience in different concentration camps, including the Plage and Laskiewicz camp near Lublin, the labor camp in Budzyn, the labor camp near a big city of Radom, the labor camp in southern Germany in Wurtemberg, and the last camp in Hessental; shortage of food and medication in the camps; liberation on April 30, 1945 by American army near Munich; life after the war. Attached to the transcript of the first interview is a list of locations of Fenigstein from April 21, 1943 to April 30, 1945.