Bernard Offen

Bernard Offen (born 17 April 1929) in Kraków, Poland is a Holocaust survivor. He survived the Kraków Ghetto and several Nazi concentration camps.

His parents, two brothers, and one sister lived in the Podgórze area of Kraków which in March 1941 became the Kraków Ghetto. His mother, Rochme Gittel Schiffer, and his sister Miriam were deported, probably to Belzec extermination camp, where they were murdered. Bernard survived the Nazi concentration camps of Płaszów, Julag, Mauthausen, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Dachau. 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.[1]

In 1951 the Offen brothers decided to emigrate to the United States. 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.[2]

Austrian Holocaust Memorial Servants (Gedenkdieners) serving their Memorial Service 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, 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."[3]

Filmography
  • The Work (1983) [4]
  • My Hometown Concentration Camp (1997) A book carrying the same name was published in 2008 [5][6]
  • Process B-7815 (1999) [7]
  • Hawaii and the Holocaust (2004)

References
  1. Offen, Sam (2005). When hope prevails: the personal triumph of a Holocaust survivor. Livonia, MI: First Page Publications. ISBN 1-928623-58-1.
  2. "Bernard Offen Interview in USHMM". Archived from the original on 2014-05-24.
  3. Offen, Bernard "For a Just World at Peace" (14 April 1986), in Gross, David (ed.) We Won't Pay: A Tax Resistance Reader (2008) pp. 470–71, ISBN 9781434898258
  4. The Work. Dir. Bernard Offen. Perf. Bernard Offen. DVD. www.Bernardoffen.com, 1983. 37 minutes.
  5. "My Hometown Concentration Camp : a survivor's account of life in the Kraków ghetto and Płaszów Concentration Camp". Archived from the original on 2020-08-15.
  6. My Hometown Concentration Camp: Walk in the Krakow Ghetto and Plaszow Camp. Dir. Bernard Offen. Perf. Bernard Offen. DVD. www.Bernardoffen.com, 1997. 23 minutes.
  7. Process B-7815: My Auschwitz Tattoo Number. Dirs. Bernard Offen, Hendrik John. Perf. Bernard Offen. Music. Herwig Strobl, Bernard Offen. Cinematography. Hendrik John. DVD. www.Bernardoffen.com, 1999. 99 minutes.
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