From Auschwitz to Berlin as a Siemens Forced Labourer
The German occupiers forced Marcel Tuchman (1921-2018) and his parents, who were Jewish Poles, into the Przemyśl ghetto in 1941. They murdered Marcel’s mother in September 1943. Marcel Tuchman and his father, Ignatz, arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau via the Szebnie Transit Camp To escape the deadly camp, they signed up for the Siemens work detail in Bobrek near Auschwitz. The work detail built a Siemens production hall in 1943 and produced war material.
Later, Siemens sent the work detail via the Buchenwald concentration camp to the The Haselhorst concentration camp, which was located on Siemens company grounds. In Berlin, Marcel Tuchman had to load barges with prefabricated barracks on the Spree Canal. He was sent with his father on a death march to Schwerin in 1945. Both survived. After the war Tuchman studied medicine in Heidelberg as part of a United Nations sponsorship program. He was the first Jewish student enrolled there in the post-war period. He graduated with honours in 1949 and immigrated to New York, where he opened his own medical practice in 1956.
