Joe Mandel, Holocaust survivor and March of the Living witness, whose story of liberation and memory is preserved through MOLDAP’s film Joe Mandel: Twice Liberated.
Holocaust Survivor, Educator, and March of the Living Witness
Joe Mandel was born in 1924 in Ruthenia, Czechoslovakia, a region that was later ceded to Hungary. During the early years of the war, Hungary’s control of the region initially shielded Joe and his family from some of the harshest realities of the Holocaust, even as anti-Jewish restrictions and persecution increasingly shaped Jewish life.
As a young man, Joe was often separated from his family while working in Budapest. His older brother had been conscripted into the forced labour battalions of the Hungarian army, and Joe would later face the same fate. In 1944, after Nazi Germany occupied Hungary, the situation for Hungarian Jews became far more dangerous. Joe was taken as a forced labourer, while much of his family was deported to Auschwitz.
As the Soviet army advanced from the east, Joe was transported through several Nazi camps, including Mauthausen, Dachau, and Gunskirchen. He was liberated by American forces at Gunskirchen on May 4, 1945.
After liberation, Joe recovered and began searching for surviving family members. He was able to find several of his siblings, and together they lived in Budapest as they tried to rebuild their lives after the Holocaust. Under communist rule, however, Joe eventually decided to leave Hungary. Following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, he escaped Hungary and made his way to Canada, first settling in Regina.
Joining the March
For many years, Joe did not speak publicly about his Holocaust experiences. That changed through his connection with March of the Living. In 2012, at the age of 88, Joe joined the March of the Living, travelling to Poland with students and educators. That journey became especially powerful when he met Mason “Mickey” Dorsey, a veteran of the 71st Infantry Division and one of the American soldiers connected to the liberation of Gunskirchen. Their emotional meeting became the subject of the MOLDAP film Joe Mandel: Twice Liberated.
Through March of the Living and the March of the Living Digital Archive Project, Joe Mandel’s testimony helps preserve the story of forced labour, deportation, liberation, silence, memory, and the responsibility to pass Holocaust history to future generations.
Picture: Joe Mandel, reunite with one of his American liberators, Mason “Mickey” Dorsey (right). “Now I feel I can live forever,” Joe said after this emotional exprience. (2012)
Featured MOLDAP Video
Joe Mandel Twice Liberated (2013)
A MOLDAP featured film about Joe Mandel’s 2012 March of the Living journey and his emotional reunion with Mason “Mickey” Dorsey, the American soldier who helped liberate Gunskirchen.
Joe Mandel segments from Crestwood Oral History Project
Joe and His Family; The Move to Budapest
The Labour Camp and Deportations
Mauthausen and Gunskirchen; Liberation
Postwar Life in Austria and Hungary
The Hungarian Revolution; Canada
Holocaust Education and Issues