Martin Baranek was born in August 1930 in Wierzbnik, Poland, the older of the two sons of his Jewish family. He remembered there was always some anti-sematic discrimination, but said he led a fairly normal life in a middle-class neighborhood until September 1939 when Germany invaded his country. With the German occupation, Baranek was no longer allowed to attend public school, rationing began, and eventually the Jews were confined to a crowded ghetto. Baranek continued his education under private tutelage.

One day in October 1942, when Martin Baranek was 12 years old and the SS [Annotator's Note: Schutzstaffel; German paramilitary organization; abbreviated SS] had taken over the city [Annotator's Note: Wierzbnik-Starachowice, Poland], all the ghetto residents were gathered in the square. Baranek remembers the SS soldiers grabbing babies from their mothers, throwing them in the air, and shooting them. Jews without work permits were being ushered to the train station. Baranek had a falsified work permit, but looked far too young, and was put among the deportees. While they walked toward the train, Baranek's sharp-witted grandmother urged him, "Run away; save yourself." His grandmother and younger brother, among 2,000 other Jews, were sent to Treblinka where they were gassed. Baranek hid out in a bakery for two days, then made his way to the work camp where his parents were making boxes for ammunition. His mother put up money to bribe a German guard to let him stay at the factory. When questioned by the German officials, Baranek lied about his age, and the factory manager backed up his story, claiming that he needed the slightly built young man to clean behind the machines. The story worked, and Baranek was allowed to stay in the camp for about two years, until the entire group was shipped to Auschwitz.

The Jewish prisoners traveled for three days in a boxcar, and when Martin Baranek arrived at Auschwitz, he faced killer dogs and equally frightening Germans with guns. They were divided according to gender and Baranek, then aged 16 but still small, stayed with his father. The older people were aware of the gas chambers and the crematoriums, but Baranek's father reassured him. The men were stripped, showered, clothed and tattooed. His father held American gold pieces, as did some of the other men, in body cavities, and gave Baranek one to carefully keep for his future. One day his father didn't return from a work detail, and Baranek learned that he had died, but "didn't have the heart" to ask how it happened. Baranek gave his gold piece to his uncle to hold until it was needed. The Germans decided to begin selections of those going to the gas chambers on the Jewish holidays as a further antagonism of the prisoners.

Martin Baranek describes how he and a friend escaped the selection process [Annotator's Note: at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp] twice, but he was eventually caught and brought to the barracks of the condemned. He was among religious Hungarian Jews who kept praying for God's will to be done. His uncle bought his liberty from the kapo [Annotator's Note: prisoner functionary assigned by the German guards to supervise forced labor or carry out administrative tasks], identifying Baranek by his tattoo number. The killings stopped, but Baranek was in Auschwitz until January 1945. Before he could be liberated, he was issued shoes and marched until his feet were frozen, and after a brief stay in a barracks, he was back on the road to Mauthausen, Austria [Annotator's Note: Mauthausen concentration camp]. Mauthausen was worse than Auschwitz.

The concentration camp at Mauthausen, Austria was infested with lice, and Martin Baranek said conditions were worse than anything conceivable. There were beatings, and no food, and many prisoners died. Then, they were shipped to a camp in the forest outside of Gunskirchen, Austria. It was worse than Mauthausen. They lived on rainwater and foliage, and slept on the ground. There were more deaths. On 4 May 1945, a day Baranek will never forget, he was liberated by elements of the American Army [Annotator's Note: 71st Infantry Division]. He was skeptical when the troops arrived and, unlike a friend who died from gorging on margarine, he held back. Baranek did not feel like a free man; he had no family, no education, and no prospects. After about a week, the Americans wanted to send him back to his country of origin, but Baranek followed some of his friends to Italy.

Martin Baranek stopped in Modena, Italy, where he slept on the floor in a former military academy building operated by a Jewish organization that clothed and fed them for about a month. Seeing no future there, he and a friend carried on to Rome, homeless and penniless. They found a place to sleep, and ducked out after eating at restaurants without paying the bill. They went back to Modena, and then back to Rome where they located an international Jewish organization that fed them, and they sold some of their clothes in order to rent a room. They went to the Vatican and took payment for converting to Catholicism, without any intention of practicing the religion. They tried to do it a second time, but they were recognized and had to run from the police. Baranek got sick and was hospitalized for two weeks, and because he didn't know the language, he never learned what was wrong with him. While he was laid up, all his clothes and money were stolen, and he and his friend considered going south to a school for Jewish boys run by the Palestinians. Baranek separated from his friend, and went to the displaced persons camp at Santa Maria di Bagni where he learned Hebrew. He joined a group going to Palestine on an illegal ship that broke down in Turkey. The thousand people on the ship ran out of food and deteriorating conditions forced them to send out an SOS [Annotator's Note: international signal, literally meaning Save Our Ship; a call for help]. In response, the British surrounded the ship and towed it to Palestine, but a new law prevented Jews from entering the country, and everyone was loaded on another boat and brought to Cyprus. By then, Baranek said, he no longer believed hearsay, and was no longer afraid of anything.

From Cyprus, Martin Baranek was one of the 750 refugees that were processed and allowed into Haifa, Palestine. Most of them were educated people coming from Germany and they offered him an education, but Baranek wanted to stay with the boys he had come to know. He joined the army and when the War of Independence for Israel started in 1948, he was fully trained in communications. Baranek said he had become a "tough son-of-a-bitch," having lived on his own since 1942, and didn't know how to "go straight." It was then that he got word from the Red Cross that his mother was alive, remarried and living in Canada. She was attempting to locate him. Baranek was reluctant to leave the life he had forged, and hesitant about interacting with a step-father, but his mother took out a loan to buy him an airline ticket, and he decided to take a two-month leave from the army to explore his possibilities. When he arrived in Canada, he communicated by sign language, took a job, and allowed his mother to spoil him. He began to pick up English and his earnings increased. He thought he was a big man.

Martin Baranek saved his money and bought a grocery store and slowly learned the business. He met and married the attractive, 16-year-old Betty, another Holocaust survivor. Having come up "the hard way," he was happy to find someone who shared a similar background. He borrowed money to buy a delivery truck and when he paid off the loan, he took a partner and bought another store. The two men stayed in business together until the partner's death. With his wife, Baranek made what he called "a nice life," and they gave their children a good education. Returning to his life in Israel, he recalled that while living in a kibbutz, where everything was socialistic, he learned to speak and write the language, and how to work. When the United Nations proclaimed Israel a country, the War of Independence was fought to ensure its status. Baranek decided to fight for Israel because although he was born Jewish, he wanted to have the same rights as any other man. He loved every minute of his military career, and the life he experienced in the kibbutz. He is proud of the life he made "with two hands," [Annotator's Note: Baranek gestures, holding up his hands], Baranek said he never knew life "could be that great."

It wasn't easy for Martin Baranek to fit into society after the war because his formative years were bereft of education and guardianship. Terrifying memories still come out of nowhere. He has had nightmares, waking in a sweat, and said his wife has handled it pretty well. Baranek has never seen a professional psychologist; he believes in talking about his troubles with other Holocaust survivors because not everyone can understand what he has to say. Baranek knows that his experiences make him different from other people, and that he will carry his memories of the war and its aftermath for the rest of his life. He feels he has to leave a legacy that helps resolve the established prejudices against the Jewish people. Baranek speaks publicly about his Holocaust experience, and leads excursions to his home country and the concentration camps to accomplish his mission. Only education, he asserts, can change things, and he never covers his Auschwitz tattoo because it is proof that he outlived the brutality of the Nazis.