Bernard Pergricht was born in Sosnowiec, Poland on April 12, 1913. When Poland was taken over by the Nazis, Bernard lost his job at a lumber company when that company was “Aryanized.” All Jews were told to get an ID card to receive food rations. Twenty thousand gathered in a sports arena for this purpose, and 5000 children and elderly were taken and “resettled.” Along with thousands of others, Bernard was forced into the Sosnowiec ghetto. In 1941, he saw his wife and parents taken away, never to be seen or heard from again. Bernard then volunteered for a labor battalion and was taken to Blechhammer, a sub-camp of Auschwitz. The Sosnowiec ghetto was liquidated soon after. Most of the ghetto’s prisoners, including Bernard’s sisters, were taken to Auschwitz, but 850 others, including his grandmother, were shot outside the ghetto in a ravine.
With the advance of the Soviet army in 1944, the Nazis began evacuating all eastern camps in Poland. Bernard, with 4,000 other prisoners, endured a three week death march to Gross-Rosen. He was reunited with one of his brothers on this march. Bernard was then taken by train to Buchenwald concentration camp. Again, he volunteered for a labor battalion and worked briefly in a nearby factory, building munitions for the Nazis. As the Allies closed in, Bernard was forced on a second death march toward Czechoslovakia. It was on this march that he was liberated by the American Army. Bernard was hospitalized and had a leg amputated. He eventually returned to his hometown and was fitted with a prosthetic leg, after which he moved to Munich. Of Bernard’s family of eleven people, only he and two brothers survived.
Bernard worked at a saw mill in Germany until immigrating to the United States in 1952 to Hartford, Connecticut. A few months later he settled in Chicago. Together with his two brothers, Bernard established a liquor business, which they managed for 18 years. Bernard married Arlene Shugart in 1959, and they moved to El Paso in 1978. Bernard became a step-father to her son, Peter Shugart. Bernard died in 2001.
Connecting Stories: Arlene (Shugart) Pergricht, Peter Shugart